It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now.
An edition of Unless
(2002)
Unless
1st ed.
by Carol Shields
- 24 Want to read
- 3 Have read
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Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has started a new sort of life. She has discoverd the meaning of loss for the first time.
For all of her days, Reta has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction, novels 'for summertime'. This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads'GOODNESS.' Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope.
Warmth, passion and wisdom come together in Shields's remarkably supple prose. Unless, a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing, proves her mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.
--front flap
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Previews available in: English Dutch French
Subjects
literary fiction, goodness, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize winner, Literature, Psychological fiction, Teenage girls, Mothers and daughters, Fiction, Women authors, Mentally ill, Domestic fiction, friends, women, American literature, Mothers and daughters, fiction, Ontario, fiction, Fiction, psychological, Large type books, Literary, Abridged Audio - Fiction/General, Fiction, generalPlaces
Ontario, Toronto, Canada, Bloor Street, Honest Ed's, Nathan Phillips Square, Orangetown| Edition | Availability |
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Unless
2010-07, Harper Perennial
Electronic resource
in English
- 1st edition
0007405065 9780007405060
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Unless: A Novel
2009, Harper Perennial
Paperback
in English
- P.S. edition (7)
0060874406 9780060874407
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Unless: A Novel
2003, Fourth Estate
Paperback
in English
- First Fourth Estate paperback edition
0007154615 9780007154616
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Unless
2003, Fourth Estate
Paperback
in English
- 1st Fourth Estate pbk. ed.
0007154615 9780007154616
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Unless: a novel
2003, Fourth Estate
Paperback
in English
- First Fourth Estate paperback edition
0007154615 9780007154616
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Unless: a novel
2003, Vintage Canada
Paperback
in English
- Vintage Canada ed.
0679311807 9780679311805
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Unless
2002-05, PerfectBound
Electronic resource
in English
- Adobe Acrobat E-book Reader edition v.1
0060523700 9780060523701
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Unless
2002, Thorndike Press
Hardcover
in English
- Large Print Edition (US)
0786245999 9780786245994
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Book Details
Edition Notes
USA
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Source records
Scriblio MARC recordmarc_openlibraries_phillipsacademy MARC record
marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary MARC record
Library of Congress MARC record
Internet Archive item record
Better World Books record
Promise Item
marc_columbia MARC record
Work Description
Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck.
Piercing and sad, astute and evocative, full of tenderness and laughter, Unless will stand with The Stone Diaries in the canon of Carol Shields’s fiction.
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Mood 1
Lonely
33%
Emotional
33%
Melancholy
33%
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