"A life is full of isolated events," writes Carol Shields near the end of Unless, "but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to link them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define... words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, therefore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet." Shield's explanation for her novel's title lends meaning to this multilayered narrative in which a mother's grief over a daughter's break with the family revises her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction.

The oldest daughter of 44-year-old Reta Winters suddenly, inexplicably, drops out of college and ends up on a Toronto street corner panhandling, with a cardboard sign around her neck that reads "goodness." The quiet comforts of Reta's small-town life and the constancy of her feminist perspective sustain her hope that her daughter will snap out of this, whatever "this" is. Threaded into her family's crisis is her ongoing internal elegy on the exclusion of women from the literary canon, which she transposes to mean her daughter's exclusion from humanity. Reta wonders if her daughter has discovered, as she herself did years before, that the world is "an endless series of obstacles, an alignment of locked doors," and has chosen to pursue the one thing that doesn't require power or a voice: goodness.

In her own writing, Reta reaffirms her own sense of self, as well as her sense of humor. As her theoretical reflections on modern womanhood play counterpoint to her unwavering sense of creating a home and keeping her family together, Reta's smarts and fears form a wonderfully coherent narrative--a life worth reading about. With Unless, the inaugural title in HarperCollins's Fourth Estate imprint, Shields (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries) once again asserts her place in the canon. --Emily Russin


From Publishers Weekly
If I have any reputation at all it is for being an editor and scholar, and not for producing, to everyone's amazement, a fresh, bright, springtime piece of fiction,' or so it was described in Publishers Weekly. That cheeky self-description sums up the protagonist of Shields's latest, the precocious, compassionate and feisty Reta Winters, an accomplished author who suddenly finds her literary success meaningless when the oldest of her three daughters, Norah, drops out of college to live on the streets of Toronto with a placard labeled Goodness hung around her neck. Shields takes an elliptical approach to Winters's dilemma, slowly exploring the possible reasons why a bright, attractive young woman would simply give up and drop out. As Shields makes her way through Winters's literary career, her marriage and the difficulties she and her daughter face in being taken seriously as women in the modern era, she employs an ingenious conceit by tracking Winters's emotions as she tries to write a sequel to her light romantic novel while helping a fellow writer, a Holocaust survivor, work on her memoirs. As Norah's plight deepens and the nature of her decision begins to surface, the romantic novel turns dark and serious, and Winters faces a rewrite when her long-time editor dies and his pedantic successor tries to introduce a sexist plot twist. Reta Winters is a marvelously inventive character whose thought-provoking commentary on the ties between writing, love, art and family are constantly compelling in this unabashedly feminist novel. The icing on the cake is the ending, which introduces a startling but believable twist to the plight of a young woman who, in doing nothing... has claimed everything. The result is a landmark book that constitutes yet another noteworthy addition to Shields's impressive body of work. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
With yet another delectable investigation into human folly, Shields helps launch a new imprint at HarperCollins.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
"Everything depends on unless." With one deceptively simple sentence, Carol Shields can open a closed mind or pierce the hardest heart. She creates real people who laugh, ache, fall in love and out of innocence. At 44, Reta Winters has a companionable marriage; three intelligent, loving daughters; and a successful writing career. Without warning, her oldest, Norah, drops out of her comfortable life to sit on a Toronto street corner wearing a sign that says 'GOODNESS.' As Reta reflects on her life, on motherhood, the writing process, powerlessness, and humanity, the splendid Joan Allen gives her depth and dimension. Allen's performance precisely captures Reta's initial anguish and, later, her ironic perceptions and sense of humor. Unless is a beautifully constructed Chinese puzzle that leaves us surprisingly hopeful. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Shields, author of the widely read, Pulitzer Prize-winning Stone Diaries (1994), is American-born but has lived in Canada since 1957, and her adopted homeland provides the setting for her latest novel. A gut-gripping story of one woman's difficult psychological journey, it becomes, in effect, a treatise on goodness and a testament to the several roles women must simultaneously shoulder. Reta Winters lives with her physician husband and three daughters in a farmhouse outside Orangetown, Ontario, an hour from Toronto. Well, all three of Reta's daughters used to live there; Norah, now 19, currently spends her time in silent contemplation, holding a begging bowl on a Toronto street corner. During the course of her anguish over her daughter's renunciation of her middle-class upbringing, Reta, a writer, tries to put life back into reasonable order in the pages of her new novel. Accepting that a daughter has "gone to goodness" is, ironically, a program of pain assuagement for Reta. Her need to bring her daughter back within the family fold arises from the very wellspring of motherhood, and the reader witnesses her attempted retrieval of happiness with open-hearted understanding. Shields shares with fellow Canadian Alice Munro not only her Ontario milieu but also a gift for psychological acuity expressed in limpid, shimmering prose. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


New York Times Book Review
"The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters."


Anita Shreve, author of Sea Glass
A brave, profound, and quirky novel with an undercurrent of the deeply amusing.


Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat
A wonderful, powerful book, written in a style which combines simplicity and elegance. I found it deeply moving.


Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A landmark book...yet another noteworthy addition to Shields's impressive body of work.


Kirkus (starred review)
Often quietly heartbreaking...often, bitingly humorous.


Book Magazine
Marvelously idiosyncratic, passionate and wise, Shields' tenth novel rollicks from beginning to end with sauciness and wit.


St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A fine book, poignant, witty, rich in character, vivid in its sense of place...surprisingly suspenseful.


Review
?The beauty of Ms. Shields? writing is the clarity and accessibility of her words. She treats the reader as an intimate, revealing details in a sympathetic voice. . . . Ms. Shields? book is invaluable . . .? -- New Brunswick Reader

?In Unless . . ., Carol Shields?s brilliant latest novel, she explores the notion of goodness and the writing process -- and how society tries to shuffle smart uncompromising women off to the margins of life. In a lesser mortal?s hands, such a book would be an earnest snore, but Shields wields a wicked wit that hits close to the bone. Think the word ?unless? implies ambivalence? This book is a sure thing.? -- Chatelaine

?[Y]et another delectable investigation into human folly . . .? -- Library Journal

?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.? -- Amazon.com

?Brilliant, humane and deeply satisfying?. It is part of Shields?s genius that she so often offers up humour and compassion on the same plate -- sometimes spiced with a subtle political comment or two. But, I repeat, this is only a part of her genius. The true gift that she gives us is that of her enormous wisdom, a wisdom that is achingly apparent in this amazing combination of darkness and light, humour and pathos called Unless. The fact that there are no clear answers to the questions that surround the nature of goodness, happiness, sorrow, does not mean that these conditions should remain unexamined. It is examinations of this kind that enhance life itself. And who better than this author to show us where to look, what to pay attention to? What better guide than a book like Unless, and what better companion than Carol Shields?? -- Jane Urquhart, The Globe and Mail

?Unless does offer hope simply in its accomplishment, in its soothing spirit of goodness that somehow transcends both character and narrative.? -- National Post

?Once again, Carol Shields takes the lives of ordinary people and exposes the human heart at its best?.life in general and the lives of women in particular are viewed in Shields? work with an elegant confluence of simplicity and complexity.? -- Times-Colonist

??poignant, yet often astringently funny?.as ever, Shields? graceful prose is a pleasure to read. She has a remarkable way of describing things one might already know, but she does so in surprising, fresh and distinctly new ways, ways that allow the reader to understand something anew.? -- Winnipeg Free Press

?Carol Shields is one of that small group of writers -- among them, Alice Munro, Richard Ford, Jayne Anne Phillips, and yes, Joan Clark -- capable of making the ordinary utterly and completely extraordinary.? -- The Calgary Herald

??Unless? is a signal word, curious, a warning and a sign. As this is a signal novel, profound and resonant, written with the virtuosity and understated brilliance that is distinctive to Carol Shields. Quite simply, Unless is a masterpiece. Brava! Brava!? -- The Ottawa Citizen

?If writers were rivers, Shields would flow more deeply and more mysteriously than it would appear from standing on the bank.? -- Kitchener-Waterloo Record

?Reading the book is like having an intimate conversation with an old friend?.Funny and sad, comic and poignant all at the same time, Unless is the continuation of a conversation that has been ongoing among women for generations.? -- The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax)

?Generous and inquiring of heart, muted in its palette, this is a grammar of melancholy: of a particular sadness, both domestic and worldly, that arrives unbidden and settles in?. Outrage, humour, compassion, and the elegant arcs of language that distinguish Carol Shields?s enduring body of work: these are here in spades. Complacency is absent, and anything that smells of defeat. Unless is a graceful summing-up -- a backward glance, an acknowledgement of this moment, and, finally, the truest assurance that art can give: the future starts now.? -- Bill Richardson, Georgia Straight

?Unless is a triumph; a complex and rich study of family, the illusion of happiness, the process of writing and what it means to be a woman trying to find a place in a literal and/or literary world.? -- The Edmonton Journal

?A novel for the ages?. Unless is the work of a master writer at the peak of her powers?. Unless has a sense of the timeless about it, a sense that it will be read with as much eagerness 100 years from now as it will be today.? -- Vancouver Sun

?From page one [Shields} commands her place as a writer capable of astounding prose and perspective?.It is the kind of writing that makes one stop, take a breath, then reread.? -- The Hamilton Spectator

??moving, satisfying and unsettling all at once.? -- The Gazette (Montreal)

?[W]ithout question, her most powerful novel to date. . . . [A]t once witty and acute, deeply intelligent and profoundly tender. . . . . This novel offers a tunnel into the light, into an alternate plane where the interior voice of an intelligent woman is heard, astringent, tender and clear.? -- Maclean?s

?[Unless] is altogether engaging, thought-provoking and easily ranks among Shields? best work.? -- The Kingston-Whig Standard

?Shields shares with fellow Canadian Alice Munro not only her Ontario milieu but also a gift for psychological acuity expressed in limpid, shimmering prose.? -- Booklist

"All novelists worth their fictional salt can create characters; Carol Shields creates lives...As with all her work, the lives she creates [here] are lovingly delineated, shot through with recognizable reality. The writing itself is perhaps better than ever, pellucid and knowing, as naturally paced as breathing itself, yet with images so apt they pounce off the page...Shields' readers will encounter great poignancy and great wisdom in this book...Carol Shields remakes the world and returns it to us, with hope, grace and redeeming life." -- New York Times Book Review (US)

"Like The Stone Diaries and its tour-de-force follow-up novel, Larry's Party, Unless presents itself, almost insistently, as a story about ordinary lives. But then, through her sensitive observation and exacting prose, the author proceeds to flip them over and show us their uncommon depths" -- Washington Post Book World (US)

"Unless is a formidable meditation on reality: it takes the vessel of fiction in its hands and hurls it to the floor. Shields' unambiguous prose is here put to the service of her intellectual daring and the result is a book that speaks without pretension about its strange and singular subject: the relationship between women and culture, the nature of artistic endeavour, and the hostility of female truth to representations of itself...Shields has produced a very, very clever book about motherhood, honour, art, language and love. It is a lament, a punch in the face, an embrace. I want to call it a masterpiece -- but I think I'll leave that for a man to say." -- New Statesman (UK)

"....a deceptively philosophical novel that succeeds in being both disturbing and reassuring in it multiple truths....the always polite, deeply subversive Shields has managed to expose, even explode, the artifice at the heart of fiction's conventions, those slightly dishonest, unwritten rules of which everyone is aware but which no one really mentions....Shields, in common with many North American writers, possesses that mastery of the ordinary that makes fiction breathe." -- Irish Times

"Unless is an extraordinary and dangerous novel. Dangerous because, like good philosophy, it asks the most fundamental questions, questions we try to avoid in our daily lives, as we study the 'art of diversion'. There are no easy answers to those questions -- 'what is goodness? what is happiness' -- but what makes a novelist great is the preparedness to ask them -- and Carol Shields asks them more scrupulously and elegantly than most." -- The Scotsman

"Unless is a joy to read, a writer working at the top of her game, bringing a remarkable intelligence to bear on both the human and the literary condition." -- Financial Times (US)

"Mothers have searched for their lost daughters in literature ever since Demeter plunged into the underworld to bring back the errant Persephone. Carol Shields' intriguing new novel mines this rich tradition to moving effect.... Shields invents a heroine forced to discard her suspicion of feminism and tiptoe towards it, learning to ask questions about social exclusion and human justice....This is [her] most interesting novel to date." -- The Independent (UK)

"...the book's challenging structure ultimately reveals its hidden ambitions. Shields once again delivers a stunningly capacious portrait of art's least favourite subject, an ordinary happy life." -- Time Out New York

"With characteristically magical prose and meticulous observation, Shields brings to life Reta's anguish and bewilderment with a vividness that is so moving, so deeply felt, that you linger over every exquisite word, reading it and rereading it, never wanting the page to end. It is a masterpiece -- in the most delicate miniature" -- Daily Mail (UK)

"Reta Winters is a marvelously inventive character whose thought-provoking commentary on the ties between writing, love, art and family are constantly compelling in this unabashedly feminist novel. The icing on the cake is the ending, which introduces a startling but believable twist to the plight of a young woman who 'in doing nothing...has claimed everything'. The result is a landmark book." -- Publishers Weekly (US) starred

"If ever a book deserved to be short-listed for the Booker, it is this one." -- Publishing News (UK)

"It is part of Shields's genius that she so often offers up humour and compassion on the same plate - sometimes spiced with a subtle political comment or two. But this...is only part of her genius. The true gift that she gives us is that of her enormous wisdom, a wisdom that is achingly apparent in this amazing combination of darkness and light, humour and pathos called UNLESS" -- Globe and Mail

"Unless is, in part, a meditation on the worth of a life spent writing -- Reta Winters, its protaganist, is herself a writer...Reta's letters are full of things Carol Shields has clearly long wanted to get off her chest and they have a real engine, energy and sparky animus to them...Read [Unless] for the sheer life of the last chapter wherein the conditional title is explained, but every narrative thread, this not being a comedy, is not tied up." -- The Herald (Glasgow)

"Nobody better captures the comic lunacy of the quotidien...but there is no mistaking the sharp mind in the background....Shields herself must be every editor's dream. She writes like an angel, awesome in the intelligence of her observations and never less than elegant in expressing them." -- Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"Shields is probably our most intelligent and beguiling observer of the everyday drama of common existence. Unless is her most raw and intentful novel yet, centred on tragedy and loss rather than the more expected themes of marital connectedness, the delicate architecture of desire and the necessity of peace, although all these subjects have a place in this exquisite new work. The novel that Reta wants to write is 'about something happening, About characters moving against a 'there'. This is just what her creator has achieved, with a matchless sensitivity that makes you draw in your breath." -- Sunday Times (UK)

"Unless is a fierce novel in which the 'f' word, feminism, rears its head. [It] is a book that celebrates the lives and concerns of women and plumbs the pitfalls of being female but refrains from male-bashing....Reta writes loopy, funny, marvellously outraged letters that she never sends to authors and editors about their omission of women in their discussions of the 'Great Books' or their failure to cite any women in their references....Reta Winters is a spectacular character, a loving, wise, fallible, accomplished and flawed woman who turns inside to seek the answers about her daughter that the world won't provide." -- Rocky Mountain News (US)

"Carol Shields's latest novel [is] her most questing and perhaps most personal yet. Unless is a defence of the art of fiction, but at the same time is deeply sceptical of it. It is intellectual and philosophical, but at the same time celebrates the mundane. Only a writer with the technical skill and warm humanity of Shields is capable of holding such contradictions in the delicate and satisfying balance that she achieves here...Unless is the purest expression of her art. It is required reading." -- The Mail on Sunday (UK)

"Her expertly deft touch with character and place, her sly merging of clues with cluelessness, ultimately blossom, Shields-like, in gold-minted scenes that not only answer the hard questions pointed at the heart but reward every single agonizing moment spent helplessly watching over a lost child in hope she will come home." -- Toronto Star

"Unless is her angriest book to date -- a study in awakening and the belated loss of innocence." -- The Guardian (UK)

"Some books come along at just the right time -- Erica Jong's 'Fear of Flying', Doris Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook' or Syvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' come to mind -- capturing the exact thoughts and feelings of women at a certain moment in history. Carol Shields' 10th novel Unless is just such a book. In Unless, now the best of her novels, Shields has illuminated not only one woman's life, but has reflected the joys, sorrows and anger found in the lives of many women.....I love this book. It has mattered in my life in a big way that few books matter in a reader's life. I have read it three times now and I will read it again and again, because each reading brings something new and thought-provoking, something disturbing and energizing; each time I find something else to admire in its intricate construction, its precise use of language. It speaks the truth with crystalline clarity." -- The Times-Picayune (US)

"From Pulitzer-winning Carol Shields, a tale about existential disarray that's spiked with feminist outrage and leavened with womanly wit...[Shields] maintains her claim as one of our most gifted and probing novelists." -- Kirkus (US) starred

"Shields shares with fellow Canadian Alice Munro not only her Ontario milieu but also a gift for psychological acuity expressed in limpid, shimmering prose." -- Booklist (US)

?Thoughtfully engaging, Shields has made Unless a true masterwork flowing with emotion, intelligence and the grace of the human condition that is able to bear personal tragedy and eventual triumph.? -- The Outreach Connection

?Carol Shields? writing is lovely to read. I just someone would sit still and let me read it to them. It sounds so right. Her characters are us, with all our small vanities and strong opinions.? -- Red Deer Advocate

?Shields knows exactly what she's doing, dropping tidbits of information at just the right moment, letting some humour peak through the pain?. Shields?s intelligence is awesome, and it comes across in effortless prose, the kind that makes you stop to read a phrase aloud and marvel at the author?s wondrous skill.? -- NOW

Praise for Carol Shields
?Her particular kind of humanity just dazzles me. It?s the foundation of her commitment to writing as a form of redemption, redeeming the lives of lost or vanished women.? -- Eleanor Wachtel for The Globe and Mail

Praise for Dressing up for the Carnival
?Not reading Shields is as much of a literary omission as overlooking Jane Austen.? -- National Post

Praise for Larry?s Party
?Shields has taken her place alongside such Canadian writers as Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood.? -- The Globe and Mail

Praise for The Stone Diaries
?The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters.? -- The New York Times Book Review

?An impeccable performance ? one which will fill her readers with amazed gratitude.? -- Anita Brookner


Book Description
I'm not interested, the way some people are, in being sad. I've had a look, and there's nothing down that road. Well now! What about the ripping sound behind my eyes, the starchy tearing of fabric, end to end; what about the need I have to curl up my knees when I sleep? For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light 'summertime' fiction. But this placid existence is cracked wide open 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' 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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has started a new sort of life. She has discovered 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.

SYNOPSIS

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Stone Diaries.

Warmth, passion, and wisdom come together in Carol 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

New Yorker

Reta Winters -- loving helpmeet to a doctor, mother of three cheerful daughters, and author of a successful comic novel -- has always considered herself happy, even blessed. Then her eldest child, nineteen-year-old Norah, briefly disappears and resurfaces as a panhandling mute on a Toronto street corner, holding up a homemade placard that says "Goodness." Shields's ability to use Reta's darkest fears to reveal the order lurking in chaos, without ever losing her light touch (Laurie Colwin comes to mind), is nothing short of astonishing.

Book Magazine

Marvelously idiosyncratic, passionate and wise, Shields' tenth novel rollicks from beginning to end with sauciness and wit. The heroine is forty-four-year-old Reta Winters, who confesses her problems from the start: "It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now," she admits. The source of Reta's troubles is her firstborn, nineteen-year-old daughter, Norah, who recently dropped out of college and now spends her days on a Toronto street corner wearing a placard that reads "Goodness" around her neck. The reasons behind this erratic behavior are unclear. Reta obsessively wonders what went wrong while she attempts to write her second "comic" novel. The plot of Unless is secondary to its biting commentary, a fact that is destined to generate buzz among literary insiders but may leave readers looking for a traditional story less than enthralled. Plenty is said about the powerlessness of women, the absurdity of publishing and the denigration of our culture. The author laments the suppression of female writers by the male establishment, and she calls to task those who have elevated the lowest common denominator at the expense of originality, vision and talent. Shields never gets lost in the whorl of these discussions. Her feet are firmly planted, even as the pitiable planet spins. —Beth Kephart

Publishers Weekly

If I have any reputation at all it is for being an editor and scholar, and not for producing, to everyone's amazement, a fresh, bright, springtime piece of fiction,' or so it was described in Publishers Weekly. That cheeky self-description sums up the protagonist of Shields's latest, the precocious, compassionate and feisty Reta Winters, an accomplished author who suddenly finds her literary success meaningless when the oldest of her three daughters, Norah, drops out of college to live on the streets of Toronto with a placard labeled Goodness hung around her neck. Shields takes an elliptical approach to Winters's dilemma, slowly exploring the possible reasons why a bright, attractive young woman would simply give up and drop out. As Shields makes her way through Winters's literary career, her marriage and the difficulties she and her daughter face in being taken seriously as women in the modern era, she employs an ingenious conceit by tracking Winters's emotions as she tries to write a sequel to her light romantic novel while helping a fellow writer, a Holocaust survivor, work on her memoirs. As Norah's plight deepens and the nature of her decision begins to surface, the romantic novel turns dark and serious, and Winters faces a rewrite when her long-time editor dies and his pedantic successor tries to introduce a sexist plot twist. Reta Winters is a marvelously inventive character whose thought-provoking commentary on the ties between writing, love, art and family are constantly compelling in this unabashedly feminist novel. The icing on the cake is the ending, which introduces a startling but believable twist to the plight of a young woman who, in doing nothing... has claimed everything. The result is a landmark book that constitutes yet another noteworthy addition to Shields's impressive body of work. FYI: As revealed in an April 14, 2002 profile in the New York Times magazine, Shields, who has terminal breast cancer, believes this will be her last novel. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Unlike The Stone Diaries or Larry's Party, with their sweeping chronology of their characters' lives, Shields's new novel transpires over a few dark months. In elegant prose, it examines a woman's emotional journey following her eldest daughter's lapse into either asceticism or psychosis. The narrator, Reta Winters, lives with her physician husband, Tom, and three teenage daughters in a lovely suburban Toronto home. She has intelligent women friends and intellectual fulfillment translating the works of her mentor, an elderly French feminist. On the side, Reta is the author of a well-received novel of "light" fiction. However, the family's lives are radically transformed when her oldest daughter, Norah, leaves college and takes up begging on a Toronto street corner, wearing a sign saying "Goodness." Reta connects this act with women's essential powerlessness, while Tom suspects it to be post-traumatic stress. This remarkably liberal family maintains contact with Norah but doesn't intervene. Meanwhile, Reta distracts herself from her inner disquisition on loss, family, and the role of women by mentally manipulating the characters in her novel-in-progress and dealing with her fussy New York editor, who turns up just as the family crisis resolves itself. Finely detailed, thoughtful, and sometimes even humorous, this book is highly recommended for all fiction collections. Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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