Unless

A couple weeks ago I finally got around to reading Unless by Carol Shields.  It had been on my list of things to read since it came out in 2002.  Alas because it was never required reading for any of my courses, and because over summer breaks (when not reading ahead for the coming year) I was usually in need of brain candy in the form of fun chicklit or fashion mags, it sat untouched on my bookshelf for half a decade.

I should point out that Carol Shields is one of my favourite authors. I fell in love the day I opened The Stone Diaries and found a family photo album in the midst of the novel.  It seemed so wonderfully bold to take pictures of real people and pass them off as fictional characters from the book.  Actors play fictional roles all the time in plays and films, but to take a photo of someone from many years ago and pass it off as a newborn character is another thing entirely.  Those pictures epitomize what is so appealing about Shields' writing.  Most of the characters in her books remind me of people I know:  they aren't trying to do anything sensational or groundbreaking, nor are they looking to turn their day-to-day lives into a fairy tale or grand aesthetic experience; they are simply living their lives and experiencing what they can while they can.  Yet the right words in the right order can turn an ordinary existence into an extraordinary work of art, and that is truly a beautiful phenomenon. 

Unless comes off as a deeply personal novel, and I get the impression Shields was in a lot of pain when writing it.  Its aura is so profoundly impactful I found myself constantly depressed while reading it (but in a good way!!!).  It is a novel about a woman writing about a woman writing about women who write (or something like that...Shields has fun with this sort of layering at various points in the novel).  The protagonist, Reta Winters, is a writer and mother whose comfortable life is turned upside down when her eldest daughter mysteriously leaves home to live in the streets of downtown Toronto.  Reta is left to contemplate the status of women in the 21st century as she tries to understand her now mute daughter's motivations.  In many ways we appear to have achieved equality, but what about cultural institutions like the literary canon that virtually ignore women?  Reta is a translator, as well as a writer of "light fiction" and those cheerful little greeting card-esq books you find in Hallmark.  Fittingly, she believes women and their accomplishments are often viewed as miniatures of men and what they have achieved.  She writes letters to those whom she sees as perpetrating this belief, none of which she sends, and all of which become increasingly imaginary (by the end, it is clear she is merely constructing the letters in her mind).  

I'm going to do the unthinkable and presume Shields shared at least some of the anger experienced by Reta in the novel.  Her fiction is known for its accessibility, and perhaps she thought of herself as being perceived as a "lesser writer of light fiction".  If so, this is a shame because to me (and to a lot of other people) she is one of the greats.  Reta Winters gives up on the fight to give women a voice she never begins in the first place.  Yet Shields, in writing Unless and her other novels, ostensively fights back with all her might.  She writes internationally celebrated novels that have unquestionable literary merit.  With all her play on the theme of women writing about women...etc..., it's hard to believe she was unaware of this when writing the novel.  Time will tell whether she was ultimately successful, and perhaps Unless is more than anything an expression of Shields' own doubts regarding the test of time (personal and/or for women in general).  There's no doubt women still have a long way to go, but I'm inclined to be optimistic:  if we've come this far over the past 50 years, imagine what we can do with another 50.  And give me Carol Shields over James Joyce any day.