Unless by Carol Shields

Unless by Carol Shields
(FYI… Book Group May 16)

This is a complex book with lots to say about the human condition as we live it here, in Canada, in the 21st century. I related to it, and I liked it.

In a way, it is not memorable, because it is not about a distant time or place and I did not learn anything about other cultures or times. Years from now, I won’t say, “Oh, yes, I remember that book about the search for the North Pole, or Montreal during the 40’s. But to dismiss it because it has every-day themes is to say that our own lives are not worth recording or examining. Shields expresses our own experiences with a skill at observing and synthesizing which gives insight and perspective that many of us do not arrive at on our own. I have read that some critics dismiss her work as not really being about anything. All of the chapter, “Any” (p247) is a rebuttal of that criticism: “Way back in high school we learned that the major themes of literature were birth, love, understanding, work, loneliness, connection, and death. We believed that the readers of novels were themselves ‘small individual lives,' and so were the writers.”

I also was left feeling an unearned relief, and disbelief, at the happy ending. But then I read that Shields was dying while she wrote this book, and I decided that she deserved a happy ending. And also, I decided that the ending was not important to the book. What makes this book good are its complex layering of themes and reflections on personal growth and family life. Notice that the same criticism could pertain to the novel within the novel. It is Reta’s puzzling through who her characters were that is important, not whether or not they marry in the end.

And the title of the book, Unless, says that things could so easily have gone another way. This is one of the themes of the novel; happiness is fragile and depends on a fortuitous combination of circumstances and can disappear if just one event does not work out as expected. In the chapter called, “Unless” (p.224 in my edition) Shields writes: “Unless is the worry word of the English language…….. Unless you’re lucky, unless you’re healthy, fertile, unless you’re loved and fed, unless you’re clear about your sexual direction, unless you’re offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair.”


There are many themes that kept me thinking. One is the interconnectness of family and the debilitating tentacles that can reach out from one member with a problem and rob the whole family of happiness and yet bind them in their shared despair. There is the scene of the whole family crying in the car after they visit the shelter where Norah is living. There is the grandmother’s refusal to talk. There is the normal blow-up between Reta and one of her daughters that is cut off because the daughter realizes that the shared pain over Norah is more important than her teenage issue.

Ironically, it is Norah’s search for “Goodness” that brings unhappiness to everyone else. The nature of goodness is another theme, although I didn’t see that there was a definitive answer to this question. But it is, after all, one of the great questions of humankind. Reta is impressed by the great goodness of the church people who run the Promise Hostel. “Where did this goodness come from?” Shields asks in the chapter, “Thereupon.” (p.191) Shields describes goodness as, “a powerful tide of virtue flowing from the veins of men and women who will not be much rewarded or even recognized for their efforts.” Reta rejects the “theory of goodness being a kind of problem solving.” as described by the author of The Goodness Gap. (Chapter, “Only”p. 219) She is surprised when her publisher tells her that Alicia, her fictional heroine, has “profound human goodness.” (“Hardly”, p. 212)

Another theme is how to carry on with normal life when one’s heart is breaking. What are the ways that we cope with personal heartbreak? This theme must stem from Shields’ own expected and imminent death. The sky may be falling, but we still must attend to our daily chores. In “Despite”, (The girls) “are both studying for exams. Just because their older sister is living the life of a derelict doesn’t mean there will be no exams…..I am calmly wiping down the kitchen counters after a dinner of shepherd’s pie and spinach salad.” (p.196)

Shields also looks at the ways we cope with personal heartbreak. Reta escapes into fantasy through writing her novel. She carries on with her normal routine. She uses the resources that she has, her loving husband and her close women friends.

Different people respond to disaster in different ways. Reta reviews her mothering skills, and we read the poignant and symbolic story about her effort to buy Norah a perfect scarf, and how she failed, in the end, to give it to her daughter. As she puzzles over the motivation for Norah’s odd behaviour, Reta projects onto Norah her own frustration stemming from living as an intellectual in a male-dominated world. Reta convinces herself that her own concerns are the trigger for her daughter’s collapse, whereas, at the end of the book we discover that Norah had quite different concerns. (“Any”p. 248: “It happens that I am the mother of a nineteen-year-old daughter who has been driven from the world by the suggestion that she is doomed to miniaturism.” Reta also creates a personality for the former owner of her home, Mrs. McGinn. Yet Lois knew Mrs. McGinn and hints that she was quite different from the fantasy which Reta has woven around her. Tom, on the other hand, uses his medical background to analyse his daughter’s problem, and comes up with his trauma theory.

Another theme is feminism and women’s place in history. I have read that the lack of communication within families is another of her themes, although I personally disagree with the importance of that theme in this particular book. But the great number of themes which can be identified in this book illustrates the complexity of Shield’s writing and the many issues that can be raised even while writing about non-memorable, commonplace events.

So, I liked the book because of its many interesting themes. But I also loved the writing. It is full of little insights and observations and apt descriptions. She describes “the arbitrariness” of the other library patrons (p.45) and says that the reason people want to write is “to remake an untenable world.” (p.208). She observes patterns of speech, how conversations often start with the word, “So.” (p.74). She has a freshness of thinking: “The examined life has had altogether too much publicity.” (p.107). She has wisdom; “They (the daughters) don’t know it, but they’re in the midst of editing the childhood they want to remember and getting ready to live as we all have to live eventually, without our mothers.” (p. 158)

Other writing techniques that Shields uses well are symbolism (the scarf-buying incident), the varying of pace by the inclusion of the letters which are clever and humourous, and the layering effect produced by the novel within the novel. As Shields creates the characters or Roman and Alicia, we are aware that she is using the same technique to create the characters in the primary narrative. We read that the characters must be given little traits and interests to make them seem realistic, and then we reflect that Tom has an interest in trilobites. Or rather, the author has given him an interest in trilobites. Trilobites?!

And there is also the foreshadowing. On rereading “Since” (p. 213) I found this passage: I…grabbed her by the hand. She screamed horribly and pulled back from me. I felt her glove coming off. It was as though she were an incendiary object, a hot coal.” And on the next page, daughter Chris says, “What happened? What terrible thing happened to her? There has to be a thing.” Wow! The evidence was certainly planted.

Shield’s creation of characters is excellent too. Or rather, the characters seem to reveal themselves. Lois blurts out her life history to the publisher (and don’t we love the thought of this city-slicker trapped in a farm kitchen listening to his author’s mother-in-law for hour after hour?) But we also learn through this event that Lois is lonely, that other adults don’t take her seriously, and that she has communication problems with her family. And Reta, our protagonist, endears herself through her actions. In the scene where she has a potential conflict with her daughter over smoking, she could have turned away in her own grief. But we see that she is a good mother, and she bridges the gap with her daughter with a hug.

I do make one criticism, and that is that sometimes I find that the comparisons are so elaborate that they interrupt the narrative flow. On page 207, we read, “this certainty arrived like a bullet-shaped slug of pewter.” And on page 178, “the air stretched out on every side like sheets of muslin.” I find that these comparisons are stretched themselves!

I am still puzzling over the role of Danielle Westerman. She has influenced Reta’s entire life, and Reta’s theories about the reason for Norah’s behaviour stem from Danielle’s philosophy. She is a crucial influence in Reta’s life, but I am not sure about her role in the novel.