Fridays With Carol Shields: Unless
I’m (re)reading what will probably be my last Carol Shields book of 2019. It’s her final novel – Unless, published the year before she died. I’ve been unfair to this novel, often citing it as my least favorite. I’m not quite done with my re-read, but I am reading it through a very different lens than I did the first time. At the time, the central plot point of the book – protagonist Reta’s daughter, Norah, has decided to “abandon life” and situate herself silently on a Toronto street corner holding a simple sign that says “goodness” – seemed gimmicky. Not now; it’s like Shields knew it *could* be gimmicky but treats it with care, and my heart contracts and expands along with Reta’s. (There might be some over-identification going on here because Reta continues to share how she’s almost 44, and, well, I am verrrrrry close to 44 as well.)
In addition to Reta’s “mother angst,” she ruminates on the writer’s life: Is her work taken seriously or is she seen as a “hobby writer”? If you’ve read Shields, you’ll know that this is not new, and one can exchange “writer” for weaver, artist, folklore researcher, or academic. Her protagonists almost always have children, and this is their worry: Am I, because I’m a mother, relegated to a less-serious category?
If you’ve followed along, you know that I adore Shields; reading something that she wrote during the time she was dying is profound. Someone commented on an earlier post that during the book tour for Unless, she was often too ill to travel so her family members would go in her stead & read from her final book. That’s beautiful & hopeful & heartbreaking all at once. (If you, too, use music as an emotional touchstone, the most comparable musical example I can come up with – for *me* at least – is R.E.M.’s Find The River. Michael Stipe and Carol Shields probably had zero in common…but maybe that assumption is underestimating the both of them.)
Her work has made me think about writing, motherhood, relationships. But mostly it’s proven to me that the most interesting people are often the most surprisingly understated and modest. (I mean, check out the deceivingly simple bio she used; pic 2.) #FridaysWithCarolShields
originally published on instagram