I think we are really getting the hang of this!!!
My copy of Unless is due in at the library next week so I will have some summer reading to enjoy.
Thanks Sue for last month's suggested read, it was certainly thought provoking .
It is always interesting the emotions that well written stories stir up and to be reminded that it is not always
necessary to feel comfortable at the end!!!!!!
Happy reading in 2012 I hope your New Years was a blast.
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by Sue, “This epic retelling of the Flood and Noah's Ark defies any easy description. It is at times humorous, dark, and tragic; fill...
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Anne Tyler has been called "the most impressive novelist of her generation". She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and four of...
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I think we are really getting the hang of this!!! My copy of Unless is due in at the library next week so I will have some summer reading t...
Katie I read the reviews for the novels you suggested and they sound great. If you agree Sue we will add them to our ever growing list!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nancy and Katie, for your very informative comments. A wonderful thing that we all come from different places - I'm learning a lot. And, of course, we are all experiencing New Year at different times. It was my parents' 63rd wedding anniversary - we went to the pub. I have to say the pictures are not going to be anything like as lovely as yours, Katie. The subject matter is nowhere near as attractive!
ReplyDeleteI'm happy with all the book titles suggested, though should say I have tried The Tiger's Wife before. I'll try it again, though. It will be good for me to be made to persevere.
Lots of interesting reading to look forward to in 2012.
Thanks again, ladies
Hello ladies
ReplyDeleteI’m finding it very difficult to write about Carol Shield’s "Unless" because there is so much going on. I haven’t taken it all in.
The plot line is enjoyable – the kind of thing you could make a film of: a mystery, some romance, comedy, interesting characters.
I loved the insights/views on writing because I’ve been attending “writing for fun” sessions and am currently trying to complete some “fun” (?) tasks. And I really sympathise her comment on reading: “That is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.” I don’t know about you, but I’m continually involved in an internal conversation. (Perhaps more so since Jay has been in Malaysia for two weeks and will remain there until the end of February.) So, a book which keeps me quiet for a while can only be good.
However, she does say: “Novels help us turn down the volume of our own interior discourse, but unless they can provide an alternative hopeful course, they’re just so much narrative crumble.”
I’m not sure what “Unless” had to offer in the way of an alternative hopeful course. It had so much to say about how we live our lives, our responses to both the ordinary and the tragic at different stages of our lives: the image of the family sitting weeping in the car after visiting the hostel rang so true. Perhaps it is a loving family life that is the hopeful course.
Perhaps feminism contributes a little to that course. Given Gwendolyn is included in the book, I’m assuming we are not meant to accept all women will flourish if given more power. Gwendolyn appears to have little integrity, and a poor relationship with her mother. Even Danielle Westerman has to come to terms with her relationship with her mother before moving on - at 86! Perhaps feminist ideas should contribute to women’s development which in turn would contribute positively to family life?
As you can tell, I’m a bit muddled in my responses to the book . To be honest, I probably ought to read it again – lots of layers which I can’t say I always appreciated/understood.
I’m really interested in what you have to say – when I looked at other readers’ comments many thought the book boring so I hope to goodness I have not suggested something that wasted your time, ladies. Choosing a book has suddenly become a dreadful responsibility.
hello,
ReplyDeleteSo pleased you made the first comment Sue! I have been finished "Unless" for over a week and was struggling as to what to say as well.
Mostly I enjoyed the storyline, however a few things bothered me.
Firstly I had trouble coming to terms with leaving Norah on the streets,I just would not do that. I MAY be hypersensitive about daughters at the moment though as I am preparing to send my own off to a new city to study, so please forgive my mother bear tendencies.
I also found her male characters one dimensional and Carol Shields depiction of them slightly annoying. The old editor Mr Scribano, the sweet old man that allowed her her way. The brash arrogant interrupting new editor that amazingly and apparently for no reason became such a good listener with the mother in law and finally Reta's husband Tom, the bookworm who seemed more interested in trilobites than rescuing his own daughter. When he finally stumbles onto the actual cause of "Norah's Trouble" he is trivialised by Reta, even though as a doctor one would think his opinion would hold some weight instead of some higher feminist principals possibly being the cause. I am not sure if this novel helped the feminist movement, what do you think? Am I the misguided one?
I also felt like you Sue, that perhaps I had missed a higher meaning and as I was reading I felt I was waiting for the "YES, I think that too moment" and felt I missed it.
I sympathise with Reta also about the pesky internal monologue that can sometimes seem on redial in our heads. I did a little research here at home and discovered that while both boys have inner talk it is generally a practical approach to how things work and how to make them work better ,we girls tended to be more creative with our inner discourse, {just a fun fact}.
I DID NOT find Unless boring, so relax, soon it will be Katies turn to sweat it {ha ha!!!}
Yes Yes Katie I agree with you. You've actually said what I was trying very clumsily to say.
ReplyDeleteI will transfer your comments over to this page soon.
I have a question for you both!!!!!!
In the beginning of the book Carol Shields begins with a George Eliot quote: "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." Is this just a reference to Norah's silence or am I missing something else? please let me know what you think?
Hello Ladies
ReplyDeleteGoodness - I was so involved with the ideas, I didn't even think of the practicalities - why indeed didn't the police intervene? The welfare services here would have been onto it in no time (I hope!) And I did think the men were one dimensional and the feminism confusing.
I do think attitudes to feminism are much affected by culture and generation. I worry about it much more than my younger colleagues did, but I do still think there is a huge amount of sexism here in the U.K. You only have to look at who holds the positions of power in politics, business and education, for example. Mrs Thatcher did nothing to promote the cause of women's rights in the U.K. There again, women have had the vote for less than a hundred years here. Which doesn't mean I entirely sympathise with Reta - her feminist characters weren't very sympathetic.
However, I'm clearly sexist myself, as I'm sure we girls would be more creative with our inner dialogue. There's some research somewhere (probably conducted by women!) which says men think of sex every few minutes, and if that's the case they are only going to be creative in a very limited area of life! (I'm exaggerating, I know, but it's true about the research.)
I'd interpreted the George Eliot quote as another slant on the 'Human kind cannot take too much reality" view (though she got in first!) and figured it was relevant to Norah. You have to build a protective shield or you can't cope with life - and Norah is still creating hers. Reta says that somewhere, but I've returned my book to the library so can't refer to the bit I'm recalling. I have to say that as I get older, my shield is getting cracks in it.
But, maybe I've completely mis-interpreted George Eliot.
And I hate to say this, but I'm pretty sure that our next book has to do with women's rights, too. I've got the book from the library.
Thank you so much, ladies for making me think.
Sue
I would take Eliot’s quote to mean that silence is not something we should fear. It is something to be appreciative of. Sometimes there is just too much noise in our lives and a little silence now and then provides tranquility. I feel that Shields uses this quote inappropriately. Her main character wants to flee from the silence by reading books or talking with others. Reta certainly has an issue achieving internal silence. She also hates the silence that has engulfed her eldest daughter. She sees Norah’s silence as wrong.
ReplyDeleteIf Shields is using this quote to refer to Norah, then I feel that Norah is “on the other side of silence”. She is in that realm where she is listening too much, taking too much in, not allowing herself the peace of silence. Even though Norah is not speaking, Shields implies she is going through an inner turmoil caused by the incident she witnessed. She even comes close to dieing because she is too concerned with her thoughts of “goodness” instead of thinking about her physical wellbeing.
Sue, I think your interpretation of Eliot’s quote is valid. It’s true that without shields too much can affect us. It is possible to be too sympathetic. Sometimes you need to back up and allow yourself some quiet. Maybe you are right in the regard that Norah hasn’t had enough time to develop the shields that her mother has. She has allowed her experience affect her life.
I still don’t know why it wouldn’t allow me to post last time.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteReceived your last post Katie, sorry you are having difficulties, do you think it is our site?
Thankyou both for your answers about the George Eliot quote, I found them thought provoking and I agree Katie, I was having trouble relating the quote to the storyline, but perhaps that was Shields' intention all along. Obviously not to confuse, but to allow us scope for our own interpretations, force us to question feminism in our own lives and maybe Reta's story is secondary to the real story she was trying to write. Does knowing Carol Shields is battling breast cancer while writing Unless change your ideas on the novel? Am I swimming too deep?
I agree with you Sue, at times I was mixing up Reta and Carol Shields, as Reta herself stated, the dangers of a writer writing about a writer writing about a writer.
As for my thoughts on the quote, maybe some people fill their lives with noise and business and franticness because they are afraid to face the silences that allow the magnification of our inner voice which asks us to honestly face the problems and
questions in our lives. For some ,maybe George Eliot himself,those answers on the other side of silence are frightening.
Thankyou Sue for this suggested read, it has been such a wonderful exchange of ideas and thoughts.
Here's my post that wouldn't post:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support Nancy. I was just thinking on Sue’s comment and fretting that maybe neither of you would enjoy my suggestions. Haha.
Unless was an easy, quick read. I had no trouble getting through it but I had so many questions throughout the entire novel. It’s why I held back on responding. Like you Nancy, I kept trying to figure out what was Carol Shields trying to “teach” me? What life lesson or message was she trying to impart to the readers? I’ve apparently missed it too. Sue, I liked her comments about using novels as a means of escape too. Sometimes I get so caught up in reading that I will actually cry along with the characters.
At almost half way through the novel, I could not relate to Reta’s sorrow. I could understand if she feared for her child’s safety. I could understand if she believed that she was a poor parent and held guilt for not doing all she could for Norah. Maybe it was just fear of what society would think of her as the mother of a vagrant. Whichever you’d like to blame her sorrow on, I just could not understand the degree of sorrow, Reta and the rest of the Winter family was feeling. I felt very much like an outsider looking at this family’s grief.
This novel has such a strong sense of feminism. Reta seems obsessed with the belief that women are not equal in society. Do either of you find Reta to be accurate in this? Is this a mentality from a different generation that I don’t see? I felt that she was making mountains out of mole hills. She was finding things to be outraged about in letters that the reader cannot read. We have to take her word that there was something that would make any woman reader angry over the author’s comments. Is she so desperate to find an outlet for her hurt and pain that she finds unfounded acts of sexism in these articles?
I don’t understand much about Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome. Why does Norah choose to sit on a corner with a sign instead of locking herself away in a home? If there was video of Norah trying to help the young woman, why didn’t the police come around to talk to Norah about the incident? Why did the young woman set herself on fire again? Didn’t Norah begin getting restless before the young woman set herself on fire? Wasn’t she becoming distant from her boyfriend before the incident with the woman? If it was after her attempt to save the Muslim woman, why didn’t the boyfriend notice the burns? These are the kind of questions I kept finding as I read through the novel. Maybe I need to reread it too.