Unless

Name: Unless
Brand: Harper Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Carol Shields
ISBN: 9780060794231

Author: Carol Shields

Narrator: Joan Allen

Unabridged: 7 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/06/2006

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

For all of her days, Reta Winters 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 oldest daughter, Norah, drops out of life 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 Carol Shields' 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.

About Carol Shields

Carol Shields was born in Chicago and lived in Canada for most of her life. She is the author of three short story collections and eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize -- winning The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party, winner of the Orange Prize.

About Joan Allen

Joan Allen has been nominated for three Academy Awards for her roles in The Contender, Nixon and The Crucible. She has starred in numerous other films, including Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Ice Storm. Ms. Allen has had two Tony nominations, winning for her debut Broadway performance in Burn This.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Fabian on June 16, 2020

Compulsively readable, this main character comes from a very long, proud lineage of other literary protagonists who get totally fucked over by their offspring. Although it doesn't come close to the pathos & articulation thereof of, say, Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin", nor the titan-i......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on May 02, 2016

UPDATE May 2016: Just found out this is going to be a movie, starring Catherine Keener as Reta! It will probably play the Toronto Film Festival in the fall. Looking forward to it! *** In Carol Shields’s Unless, Reta Winters, a happy, middle-aged novelist and translator, a wife and mother of three chil......more

Goodreads review by Ron on December 26, 2013

You wouldn't expect it from her, but Carol Shields has written a naughty book. Put your yellow highlighter down: There's no sex, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Stone Diaries" is doing something indecorous here -- ribbing our notions of grief, even snickering at what inspires us. Her la......more