The oldest daughter of 44-year-old Reta Winters suddenly, inexplicably, drops out of college and ends up on a Toronto street corner panhandling, with a cardboard sign around her neck that reads "goodness." The quiet comforts of Reta's small-town life and the constancy of her feminist perspective sustain her hope that her daughter will snap out of this, whatever "this" is. Threaded into her family's crisis is her ongoing internal elegy on the exclusion of women from the literary canon, which she transposes to mean her daughter's exclusion from humanity. Reta wonders if her daughter has discovered, as she herself did years before, that the world is "an endless series of obstacles, an alignment of locked doors," and has chosen to pursue the one thing that doesn't require power or a voice: goodness.

In her own writing, Reta reaffirms her own sense of self, as well as her sense of humor. As her theoretical reflections on modern womanhood play counterpoint to her unwavering sense of creating a home and keeping her family together, Reta's smarts and fears form a wonderfully coherent narrative--a life worth reading about. With Unless, the inaugural title in HarperCollins's Fourth Estate imprint, Shields (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries) once again asserts her place in the canon.

From the Back Cover

“The beauty of Ms. Shields’ writing is the clarity and accessibility of her words. She treats the reader as an intimate, revealing details in a sympathetic voice. . . . Ms. Shields’ book is invaluable . . .” -- New Brunswick Reader

“In Unless . . ., Carol Shields’s brilliant latest novel, she explores the notion of goodness and the writing process -- and how society tries to shuffle smart uncompromising women off to the margins of life. In a lesser mortal’s hands, such a book would be an earnest snore, but Shields wields a wicked wit that hits close to the bone. Think the word “unless” implies ambivalence? This book is a sure thing.” -- Chatelaine

“[Y]et another delectable investigation into human folly . . .” -- Library Journal

“Brilliant, humane and deeply satisfying…. It is part of Shields’s genius that she so often offers up humour and compassion on the same plate -- sometimes spiced with a subtle political comment or two. But, I repeat, this is only a part of her genius. The true gift that she gives us is that of her enormous wisdom, a wisdom that is achingly apparent in this amazing combination of darkness and light, humour and pathos called Unless. The fact that there are no clear answers to the questions that surround the nature of goodness, happiness, sorrow, does not mean that these conditions should remain unexamined. It is examinations of this kind that enhance life itself. And who better than this author to show us where to look, what to pay attention to? What better guide than a book like Unless, and what better companion than Carol Shields?” -- Jane Urquhart, The Globe and Mail

“Unless does offer hope simply in its accomplishment, in its soothing spirit of goodness that somehow transcends both character and narrative.” -- National Post

“Once again, Carol Shields takes the lives of ordinary people and exposes the human heart at its best….life in general and the lives of women in particular are viewed in Shields’ work with an elegant confluence of simplicity and complexity.” -- Times-Colonist

“…poignant, yet often astringently funny….as ever, Shields’ graceful prose is a pleasure to read. She has a remarkable way of describing things one might already know, but she does so in surprising, fresh and distinctly new ways, ways that allow the reader to understand something anew.” -- Winnipeg Free Press

“Carol Shields is one of that small group of writers -- among them, Alice Munro, Richard Ford, Jayne Anne Phillips, and yes, Joan Clark -- capable of making the ordinary utterly and completely extraordinary.” -- The Calgary Herald

“‘Unless’ is a signal word, curious, a warning and a sign. As this is a signal novel, profound and resonant, written with the virtuosity and understated brilliance that is distinctive to Carol Shields. Quite simply, Unless is a masterpiece. Brava! Brava!” -- The Ottawa Citizen

“If writers were rivers, Shields would flow more deeply and more mysteriously than it would appear from standing on the bank.” -- Kitchener-Waterloo Record

“Reading the book is like having an intimate conversation with an old friend….Funny and sad, comic and poignant all at the same time, Unless is the continuation of a conversation that has been ongoing among women for generations.” -- The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)

“Generous and inquiring of heart, muted in its palette, this is a grammar of melancholy: of a particular sadness, both domestic and worldly, that arrives unbidden and settles in…. Outrage, humour, compassion, and the elegant arcs of language that distinguish Carol Shields’s enduring body of work: these are here in spades. Complacency is absent, and anything that smells of defeat. Unless is a graceful summing-up -- a backward glance, an acknowledgement of this moment, and, finally, the truest assurance that art can give: the future starts now.” -- Bill Richardson, Georgia Straight

“Unless is a triumph; a complex and rich study of family, the illusion of happiness, the process of writing and what it means to be a woman trying to find a place in a literal and/or literary world.” -- The Edmonton Journal

“A novel for the ages…. Unless is the work of a master writer at the peak of her powers…. Unless has a sense of the timeless about it, a sense that it will be read with as much eagerness 100 years from now as it will be today.” -- Vancouver Sun

“From page one [Shields} commands her place as a writer capable of astounding prose and perspective….It is the kind of writing that makes one stop, take a breath, then reread.” -- The Hamilton Spectator

“…moving, satisfying and unsettling all at once.” -- The Gazette (Montreal)

“[W]ithout question, her most powerful novel to date. . . . [A]t once witty and acute, deeply intelligent and profoundly tender. . . . . This novel offers a tunnel into the light, into an alternate plane where the interior voice of an intelligent woman is heard, astringent, tender and clear.” -- Maclean’s

“[Unless] is altogether engaging, thought-provoking and easily ranks among Shields’ best work.” -- The Kingston-Whig Standard

“Shields shares with fellow Canadian Alice Munro not only her Ontario milieu but also a gift for psychological acuity expressed in limpid, shimmering prose.” -- Booklist

"All novelists worth their fictional salt can create characters; Carol Shields creates lives...As with all her work, the lives she creates [here] are lovingly delineated, shot through with recognizable reality. The writing itself is perhaps better than ever, pellucid and knowing, as naturally paced as breathing itself, yet with images so apt they pounce off the page...Shields' readers will encounter great poignancy and great wisdom in this book...Carol Shields remakes the world and returns it to us, with hope, grace and redeeming life." -- New York Times Book Review (US)

"Like The Stone Diaries and its tour-de-force follow-up novel, Larry's Party, Unless presents itself, almost insistently, as a story about ordinary lives. But then, through her sensitive observation and exacting prose, the author proceeds to flip them over and show us their uncommon depths" -- Washington Post Book World (US)

"Unless is a formidable meditation on reality: it takes the vessel of fiction in its hands and hurls it to the floor. Shields' unambiguous prose is here put to the service of her intellectual daring and the result is a book that speaks without pretension about its strange and singular subject: the relationship between women and culture, the nature of artistic endeavour, and the hostility of female truth to representations of itself...Shields has produced a very, very clever book about motherhood, honour, art, language and love. It is a lament, a punch in the face, an embrace. I want to call it a masterpiece -- but I think I'll leave that for a man to say." -- New Statesman (UK)

"....a deceptively philosophical novel that succeeds in being both disturbing and reassuring in it multiple truths....the always polite, deeply subversive Shields has managed to expose, even explode, the artifice at the heart of fiction's conventions, those slightly dishonest, unwritten rules of which everyone is aware but which no one really mentions....Shields, in common with many North American writers, possesses that mastery of the ordinary that makes fiction breathe." -- Irish Times

"Unless is an extraordinary and dangerous novel. Dangerous because, like good philosophy, it asks the most fundamental questions, questions we try to avoid in our daily lives, as we study the 'art of diversion'. There are no easy answers to those questions -- 'what is goodness? what is happiness' -- but what makes a novelist great is the preparedness to ask them -- and Carol Shields asks them more scrupulously and elegantly than most." -- The Scotsman

"Unless is a joy to read, a writer working at the top of her game, bringing a remarkable intelligence to bear on both the human and the literary condition." -- Financial Times (US)

"Mothers have searched for their lost daughters in literature ever since Demeter plunged into the underworld to bring back the errant Persephone. Carol Shields' intriguing new novel mines this rich tradition to moving effect.... Shields invents a heroine forced to discard her suspicion of feminism and tiptoe towards it, learning to ask questions about so --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Carol Shields is the author of ten novels and two collections of short stories. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and the Orange Prize for Larry's Party. Born and brought up in Chicago, Carol Shields has lived in Canada since 1957.

Find 'Unless: A Novel' in our BookStore