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

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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

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.

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.

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.

Startle and Illuminate

Startle and Illuminate PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0345815955
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Shimmering with her unique style, sense, humour, vision and wit, Startle and Illuminate is a book of advice and reflections on writing by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields that is destined to become as valued and essential as Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. An essential work from one of Canada's finest writers, Startle and Illuminate stands as a reflection of Carol Shields' devotion to the writer's craft. Drawn together by her daughter and grandson from decades of correspondence with other writers, essays, notes, comments, criticism and lectures, Startle and Illuminate helps answer some of the most fundamental questions about the craft: Why do we write at all? Can writing be taught? What keeps a reader turning the pages? How is a writer to know when a work is done? In her own words, Shields reveals her thoughts on why we read, and more importantly, 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.

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.

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.

Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families

Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Blizzard Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
"Poignant and comic insights". -- The Globe and Mail Pulitzer Prize-winning author and playwright Carol Shields collaborates with her daughter, Catherine Shields to explore the social and private worlds of the modern family in this funny, poignant and gently challenging play.

The Orange Fish

The Orange Fish PDF Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 1039004180
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A superb collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Governor General's Award. Emerging from these twelve beautifully articulated stories are portraits of men and women whose affairs and recoveries in life take us into worlds that are both new and yet unnervingly familiar. A smile of recognition and a shock of surprise await readers of these finely crafted stories. From the magical orange fish itself--enigmatic and without age--to holiday reunions; from the passions and pains of lovers and friends to the moving uncertainty of a Parisian vacation, this exquisite collection is bound to delight and enchant Carol Shields's fans everywhere.

Carol Shields

Carol Shields PDF Author: Aritha Van Herk
Publisher: Barkhuis
ISBN: 9077922512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Beloved of readers and writers alike, Carol Shields was a formidable creative force. The author of dozens of books, she won a Pulitzer Prize and an Orange Prize, a Governor General's award, and many other honours and recognitions. And this extraordinary writer's work continues to inspire lovers of language from around the world. Carol Shields: Evocation and Echo gathers together a bouquet of literary responses. Critics, friends, and fellow writers from North America and Europe here respond to the writing of Carol Shields. Their observations, augmentations, and creative interventions make for a collection that pays homage to Shields, but nonetheless possesses its own distinctive flavour. Her magnificent words continue to reverberate, evoking laughter and memory, and echoing her perceptive eloquence.