Unless

Unless PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061828165
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
“[Shields is] unsparing as she explores the black holes of uncertainty in women’s lives . . . these are the dark thoughts of an illuminating novel.” —Chicago Tribune The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, Unless is a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family’s anguish and healing, proving Shields’s mastery of extraordinary fiction about ordinary life. For all of her life, forty-four-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 of college 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. “Nothing short of astonishing.” —The New Yorker “A thing of beauty—lucidly written, artfully ordered, riddled with riddles and undergirded with dark layers of philosophical meditations.” —Los Angeles Times “Like The Stone Diaries, which won Shields a Pulitzer Prize, and her tour de force follow-up novel, Larry’s Party, Unless presents itself, almost instantly, as a story about ordinary lives. But then, through her sensitive observations and exacting prose, the author proceeds to flip them over and show us their uncommon depths . . . a fine novel.” —The Washington Post Book World

Unless

Unless PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061828165
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
“[Shields is] unsparing as she explores the black holes of uncertainty in women’s lives . . . these are the dark thoughts of an illuminating novel.” —Chicago Tribune The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, Unless is a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family’s anguish and healing, proving Shields’s mastery of extraordinary fiction about ordinary life. For all of her life, forty-four-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 of college 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. “Nothing short of astonishing.” —The New Yorker “A thing of beauty—lucidly written, artfully ordered, riddled with riddles and undergirded with dark layers of philosophical meditations.” —Los Angeles Times “Like The Stone Diaries, which won Shields a Pulitzer Prize, and her tour de force follow-up novel, Larry’s Party, Unless presents itself, almost instantly, as a story about ordinary lives. But then, through her sensitive observations and exacting prose, the author proceeds to flip them over and show us their uncommon depths . . . a fine novel.” —The Washington Post Book World

Swann

Swann PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 030736724X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Carol Shields's award-winning and critically acclaimed "literary mystery," first published in 1987. Swann is the story of four individuals who become entwined in the life of Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet whose authentic and unique voice is discovered only hours before her husband hacks her to pieces.Who is Mary Swann? And how could she have produced these works of genius in almost complete isolation? Mysteriously, all traces of Swann's existence — her notebook, the first draft of her work, even her photograph — gradually vanish as the characters in this engrossing novel become caught up in their own concepts of who Mary Swann was.

Happenstance

Happenstance PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 1841154687
Category : Married people
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
A week spent apart for a long-time married couple brings new and frightening experiences for each. Bewildered in a new city, Brenda struggles to cope. Meanwhile, at home, Jack's world falls apart; but while dealing with the crises around him, he learns something about himself.

Larry's Party

Larry's Party PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307364119
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The Stone Diaries marked a new phase in a literary career already ablaze with achievement. As well as the many international awards it received, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Governor General's Award, the book also met with universal critical acclaim and topped bestseller lists around the world. "Carol Shields," raved Maclean's, "has crafted a small miracle of a novel." "The Stone Diaries," said the New York Times Book Review, "reminds us again why literature matters." The San Diego Tribune called The Stone Diaries "a universal study of what makes women tick." Now, in Larry's Party, Carol Shields does the same for men. Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Larry's Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997 that flash backward and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the new millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields' elegant prose transforms the trivial into the momentous. We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, his interactions with parents, friends and a son. And throughout, we witness his deepening passion for garden mazes -- so like life, with their teasing treachery and promise of reward. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search for self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.

The Republic of Love

The Republic of Love PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 1039004202
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
With a viewpoint that shifts as crisply as cards in the hands of a blackjack dealer, Carol Shields introduces us to two shell-shocked veterans of the wars of the heart. There's Fay, a folklorist whose passion for mermaids has kept her from focusing on any one man. And right across the street there's Tom, a popular radio talk-show host who has focused a little too intently, having married and divorced three times. Can Fay believe in lasting love with such a man? Will romantic love conquer all rational expectations? Only Carol Shields could describe so adroitly this couple who fall in love as thoroughly and satisfyingly as any Victorian couple and the modern complications that beset them in this touching and ironic book.

Small Ceremonies

Small Ceremonies PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0394224841
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The superb first novel from the author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Governor General's Award, a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Judith Gill is a well-respected biographer who desperately wants to write fiction. When she joins her academic husband on sabbatical in Birmingham, she finds on the shelves of their rented flat the notes of a failed novelist. With considerable guilt, Judith decides to plagiarize one of the ideas and brings it home to Canada to work on. Frustrated by the creative process but determined to be more imaginative, Judith attends writing classes and later discovers that her tutor, suffering from writer's block, has ripped off 'her' idea. Once again, Shields focuses her sharp gaze on the small ceremonies of life in this novel of rare intelligence and wit.

Startle and Illuminate

Startle and Illuminate PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Random House Canada
ISBN: 0345815963
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
In the course of her extraordinary career, which included the novels The Stone Diaries, Larry's Party, The Republic of Love and Unless, as well as poetry, short stories, biography and plays, Carol Shields was unfailingly encouraging of other writers. She read and commented on her friends' manuscripts. She taught writing classes and she spoke and wrote on the craft of writing. Her own discipline rarely faltered. Her daily practice was to write a new page, then edit the page written the day before, then repeat, until, after a year or so, her book was finished. Now in her own words, as clear and straightforward as a glass of water, comes Startle and Illuminate, the best possible guide to the writing process, from conception to publication. This essential work, drawn by her daughter and grandson from her voluminous correspondence with other writers, essays, notes, comments, criticism and lectures, is a last gift from one of our finest novelists meant for both aspiring and established writers. It helps answer some of the most fundamental questions about writing: such as, why we write at all, whether writing can be taught, what keeps a reader turning the pages, and how a writer knows when a work is done. For Shields's devoted readers, Startle and Illuminate reveals her own thoughts on why we read--to be the other, to touch and taste the experience of the other; and why we write--for the joy of the making, to reimagine our world, to discover patterns and uncover forms that echo our realities as well as interrogate them, to imagine alternate worlds. It is a beautiful legacy.

The Box Garden

The Box Garden PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307364127
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Until events run wildly out of hand, Charleen Forrest manages to cope with the uncertainties of a failed marriage, trying to live her own life and raise a son on her frugal income. She is not unaware of the hazards: "family, banktellers, ex-husband, landladies, bus drivers... men on the make who want her to lie back and accept (this is what you need, baby), friends who feel sorry for her." Her resourcefulness is a delight; her uncanny observations and surprising irony reveal a witty, wry edge that is apt to make you laugh out loud.

Wombat Walkabout

Wombat Walkabout PDF Author: Carol Diggory Shields
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525478655
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Rhyming text follows six little wombats on walkabout and a hungry dingo following, envisioning them as his lunch until the wombats turn the tables on him.

A Memoir of Friendship

A Memoir of Friendship PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Viking
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
A Memoir of Friendship is a rich collection of the letters Shields and Howard exchanged from 1975 to 2003. Carol Shields took her place on the world literary stage when she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries. Blanche Howard, 22 years older than Carol and herself a published, award-winning author, became Shields's mentor and confidante.Written with humour and insight, this window into their daily lives explores their friendship, their disappointment and joys, their ambitions, and their thoughts on other writers and the craft of writing.