Unless (28 page)

—Houston Chronicle

“When Shields is good she is very good. There are nuggets of pure gold in
Unless
.”

—Star Ledger

“All the trademark Shields delights are robustly present: idiosyncratic plotting; limber prose; an unflinching probing into the mind’s private crannies; a deep compassion for her flawed characters; tart commentary and irreverent wit; and above all, an inventive perspective on ordinary people coping with ordinary and extraordinary events…Wit, wisdom, and warmth abide at the novel’s end, bringing into focus unapologetically feminist reflections on motherhood, self-expression, self-worth, and the particular power of women, when wounded, to heal not just themselves, but those who orbit around them. This examined life is well worth living along with Reta, and this novel is one to savor and to share.”

—Orlando Sentinel

“The power to invent and the importance of connecting with other people are at the heart of this engaging, memorable novel.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A fitting farewell from an author revered for her graceful, insightful writing…sparkles with wry humor and elegant irony.”

—Hartford Courant

“
Unless
isn’t a grand finale to Shields’s oeuvre; it’s not a monumental summing up. It’s a graceful coda, an arabesque performed over an abyss. Reta speaks to us in a voice both calm and urgent. This is no time for prevarication, she seems to say. This is the time for truth.”

—Time Magazine

“If ever a book deserved to be shortlisted for the Booker, it is this one.”

—Publishing News

THE WORK OF CAROL SHIELDS

POETRY

Others

Intersect

Coming to Canada

NOVELS

Larry’s Party

The Stone Diaries

The Republic of Love

A Celibate Season
(with Blanche Howard)

Mary Swann

A Fairly Conventional Woman

Happenstance

The Box Garden

Small Ceremonies

STORY COLLECTIONS

Dressing Up for the Carnival

The Orange Fish

Various Miracles

PLAYS

Departures and Arrivals

Thirteen Hands

Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families
(with Catherine Shields)

Anniversary
(with David Williamson)

CRITICISM

Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision

ANTHOLOGY

Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told
(Edited with Marjorie Anderson)

Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told
(Edited with Marjorie Anderson)

BIOGRAPHY

Jane Austen: A Penguin Lives Biography

Credits

Cover design by Mary Schuck

Cover photograph of the author at age seven, courtesy of the Shields family

Copyright

UNLESS
. Copyright © 2002 by Carol Shields. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First Fourth Estate paperback published 2003.

First Harper Perennial edition published 2006.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Shields, Carol.

Unless: a novel/Carol Shields.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN
0-00-714107-6 (hc)

1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Women authors—Fiction. 3. Teenage girls—Fiction. 4. Mentally ill—Fiction. 5. Ontario—Fiction.

I. Title.

pr9199.3.s514 u55 2002

813'.6—dc21

ISBN
-10: 0-06-087440-6 (pbk.)

ISBN
-13: 978-0-06-087440-7 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-182816-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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