Unless (2002)

"Probably you will dismiss this as a crank letter from one of those women who go around begging to be offended, but you must understand that I am trying to protect Norah, and her two younger sisters, Christine and Natalie, who want only to be allowed to be fully human."

With her final novel, Unless, Carol Shields does something rather brilliant. She sets the story up as if it will be a typical domestic drama and then, gradually, allows it to become more metatextual as it begins to explore the way that "domestic dramas" are marginalized as "lesser" forms of fiction and how this is merely an extension of other ways in which women's voices/interests/points of view have been shunted to the side throughout history. It is, at times, an angry novel, a story about feeling that you are without a place in the world around you, that you are completely lacking in subjectivity - or, at least, subjectivity that is recognized and acknowledged by those around you.

Unless centres on Reta Winters, a novelist of "light" fiction working on her second book. She is also working on the fourth book of translation for her friend, a noted feminist and writer. She is also struggling to understand why her eldest daughter has dropped out of the family and university in order to sit on a street corner all day, every day with a cardboard sign around her neck which reads "Goodness." Reta's need to understand ultimately drives the novel she's writing and it becomes more and more about female subjectivity and the need to make one's voice heard. During the course of Unless this need is also expressed through letters that Reta writes in response to articles and books she's read which she feels dismiss the female experience, and through Reta's frustrating relationship with her editor who seems incapable of hearing her and is determined to impose his own (male-centric) vision on her novel.

Shields has an easy, engaging prose style that brings the reader deeply into league with Reta. Her struggles, though personal, are also universal and very relatable and Shields is able to explore the novel's larger themes in a way which taps into the anger that comes naturally from the feeling that you're being ignored without ever going over the edge and becoming strident or whiny. The only criticism I have of the novel is that the story seems to wrap up rather quickly and tidily and that's really only a minor qualm. All in all, Unless is a moving and very thought provoking work from a writer who was still very much at the top of her game.