Unless is a novel about a
Canadian woman, a writer and a mother, by the Canadian writer and mother Carol
Shields.  The novel is narrated by Reta
Winters, who lives with her family about an hour north of Toronto.  Reta reflects on her life and family, her
writing, the plight of women writers, and language.  The novel is held together by the main plot line, that Reta’s
eldest daughter Nora has dropped out of Toronto University, and has become a
street person, sitting all day saying nothing, with a sign she has made herself
hanging around her neck, with one word written on it: GOODNESS.  The whole family worries about her, wonders
why she has made this choice, and why she will not even talk to them. 

Reta has written short stories, a
novel, and has translated many of the works from the French of Danielle
Westerman, an important woman thinker. 
Reta, who is in her mid forties, grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and has
been strongly influenced by the revolutionary spirit of 1968, protest
movements, and feminist thought.  Yet
she lives a rather conventional bourgeois life, with her physician husband Tom
and her three lively daughters.  She and
Tom never got married, because they did not like the idea of conforming to
convention, but they have lived in a monogamous relationship for decades and
the lack of a marriage certificate makes no difference, especially since she
even changed her last name to his.  She
often talks with Westerman, who has led a more austerely unconventional life,
and Reta often compares herself with Westerman, but she does not want to live
that sort of life.  Reta’s first novel
was a comic romance, and was favorably reviewed in major newspapers.  There is another volume of Westerman’s
memoirs waiting to be translated, but Reta is more motivated to write a sequel
to her novel.  Reta says that the Nora’s
choice has made her deeply unhappy, and she is experiencing a terrible loss,
but this does not reflect much in her stream of consciousness. 

Reta spends a lot of time thinking
about the way that women writers are treated, and why they are categorized as
"women writers" rather than just writers.  She composes letters in her head to other writers about how their
sexist assumptions trouble her — why their lists of great writers are all men,
why their examples explaining their ideas feature only men, or why their praise
for women is always qualified — "good for a woman."  She devotes a lot of time to thinking about
her new novel and how to write it: she wants to include many details about her
main character’s friendships and family relations, including a little about her
parents.  She wants to give the woman’s
perspective, and wants her character to break off her engagement to her
trombone-playing fiancé. 

The novel leaves its reader to
wonder how much distance there is between its writer and its main
character.  Obviously they are not the
same person, but it is obvious that Shields is using Reta to convey many of her
own reactions and thoughts.  Shields
devotes plenty of time in this novel to Reta’s friendships and family
relations, including a little about Tom’s mother, who lives next door.  Reta becomes interested in the idea of
goodness, and her editor says that her novel is about goodness.  Shields says in an answer to a question at
the end of the audiobook that in Unless, she wanted to examine the idea
of goodness. 

Shields writes well, and Joan
Allen’s reading in the unabridged audiobook is compelling.  She sets out her concerns well, and her
rather pointed criticisms of the sexism in the world of literature are
eloquently argued.  However, as a novel
about the reactions of a family to a daughter seeming to drop out of ordinary
life, the book lacks conviction.  Nora
may be starting a major mental illness, and may risking her life, but Reta
focuses on writing her new book. 
Despite her proclamation that she is not in favor of introspection, Reta
seems self-obsessed, since she writes mainly about herself and those connected
with her.  That is a characteristic of
almost any first person narrative of book length — narcissistic tendencies are
probably necessary for anyone who is prepared to write hundreds of pages about
their own lives or opinions — but there’s something jarring about Reta.  It is hard to put one’s finger on exactly
what makes one want to find fault with her, and her feminist concerns raise the
possibility that it is motivated by sexist assumptions.  How can the male protagonists of the novels
of Richard Ford or Richard Russo, for instance, be so engaging, while Shields’
narrator makes one want to take issue with her?  Setting aside the possibility that this is simply because of the
reviewer’s sexism as a conclusion I don’t care for, another possible source of
the difference is that those male protagonists are so fundamentally flawed and
struggling, while Reta is earnest and a little self-righteous. 

Nevertheless, Unless is a
book that is worth reading because it provokes the reader to think and
argue.  It serves as a representative of
various labels such as feminist, Canadian, literary, and Reta is proud to claim
those labels for herself.  But the book
has enough complexity to it for readers to avoid being reduced to those
labels.  The book has many flaws, even on
its own terms.  Most of the characters
apart from Reta and Tom are sketched rather thinly, and the book editor who
makes an appearance near the end of the novel has a cartoonish feel to him,
since he has so many foolish and pompous things to say.  By the end, Nora’s bizarre behavior is
explained, but the explanation is rather swift and unrevealing.  Indeed, the whole theme of goodness, which
is supposed to be central to the novel, is not really examined in any depth.  However, despite these flaws, there is
plenty in Shields’ novel to reflect on; it invites comparison with other
serious and stimulating novels.

© 2005 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is
Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island, and editor
of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: AudioBooks, Fiction