Unless Paperback by Carol Shields

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2017-08-15)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 336 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780735273719
• Item Weight: 244.94 grams
• Dimensions: 8.0 x 5.1 x 0.72 cm

Written with sadness and honesty, Unless is a bittersweet reflection on women and their place in world, real and literary...


     Reta Winters has spent her 44 years in quiet contentment. Enjoying her moderate success as an author, working as a translator for Danielle Westerman, and satisfied by the other small pleasures of her life, Reta has no cause for complaint. That is until her oldest daughter, Norah, drops out of university and parks herself on a street corner wearing a sign around her neck that reads "Goodness." Confused and angry, Reta is forced out of her contentment and into restless reflection. As she tries to understand the meaning of her daughter's decision, she turns to writing to provide solace for her anger. As she pens her rage into unsent letters, Reta confronts her thoughts on women--in the world, in writing, and as writers.

About the Author

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935, CAROL SHIELDS moved to Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England, and then obtained her M.A. at the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and wrote her first novel, Small Ceremonies, in 1976. Over the next three decades, Shields would become the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels, a book of criticism on Susanna Moodie and a biography of Jane Austen. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages. Shields died in 2003, aged 68, from breast cancer.