In a court of law, the judge and/or the jury listens to the plaintiff and the defendant before making a decision. It is important to listen to both sides of a story to get the real picture of what is going on. Nowhere is this more true that when it comes to man-woman relations.

I love books that have unusual formats. This one immediately caught my eye. I read Brenda's story first, then Jack's. Amazingly enough, after 20 years living together, they are still somewhat strangers to each other, yet they have a fine marriage, with harmony, peace, fulfilling sex, the works. Brenda goes away for one week to a quilters' convention and both she and Jack are presented with itchy temptation. The most entertaining point of the novel for me is their feelings towards the other's creativity. In her absence, Jack meditates about Brenda's quilts and her determination, and feels rather jealous about it. In his absence, Brenda thinks about Jack's book and his writer's block, and feels rather irritated about his sloth. The array of miscellaneous characters are interesting, although some are extremely annoying (the convention organizers, for example). Not a bad novel by an excellent author, who nevertheless has created better works.

A story about a short period in a long marriage, Carol Shield's tackles the interior monologues of both husband and wife with a unique style - half the story is the wife's take and the other half the husband's.

It's all those things you think about your partner, but don't say because you truly want to stay together. The "oh, he's doing that again, how embarrassing" sort of interior monologue, but with some nice introspection on the part of each character.

Some slightly funny bits, but more in line with the absurd things that happen in a real life.

All in all, an absorbing read.

I'm surprised at the way the Kirkus review above mischaracterizes this wonderful novel. I read the husband's half of the story first, since Shields wrote that one first. The author does a masterful job of not repeating herself at all, amazing considering she's covering the same basic period of time as experienced by two halves of a single marriage (though the wife is away for several days at a conference -- an event that is a delight to read about if you've ever been to a conference yourself). Shields handles the everyday, tiny moments of a family's life with such searing poignancy that I had to stop reading every so often and reflect -- and that is, to me, the sign of a very good piece of literature. I love the way she uses the wife's quilting to explore the creative process (and her writer's block segment, when the husband fiddles away his 'free' day, is priceless and oh-so-true). The marriage feels real, the feelings of the mother for her teen children are absolutely genuine in their crushing intensity and occasional ambivalence, and the resolution of the book is the kind I like best: not neat, not melodramatic, not resolved once and for all, yet leaving you with a sense that you've shared a life and gained something permanent from the experience. Subtle, funny, and though it was first published in the early 80s, this unusual double novel is universal in its themes.

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., author of WRITING IN FLOW

Mansfield Park got better as I read on...

The characterizations are typical of Jane Austen: alive, distinct and vivid. Sir Thomas Bertram as Fanny Price's father is vindicated especially when compared to Mr. Price (Mansfield vs. Portsmouth is a part of this distinction). Mrs. Norris's treatment of Fanny is deplorable; her move to the morally banckrupt permanently cements her personality. Fanny herself is not my ideal heroine. Her timidity and repression could use a good dose of Elizabeth Bennet's wit and Emma Woodhouse's confidence. Then again, she would not be Fanny anymore. ..

Recently I've been on an Austen kick to read everything of hers that I can get my hands on. After eagerly devouring "Emma," "Sense and Sensibility", "Persuasion" and many of her other novels, I started "Mansfield Park" with equal eagerness. I enjoyed every part of the book up to the very end. The characters were well drawn, each a distinct and unique personality that I've come to expect in Jane Austen's works. **Some spoilers following** Henry Crawford seemed to really be in love with Fanny and I believe that Fanny was softening much towards him. Given a little more time, perhaps, I think Crawford could have easily won her over. I know that it was the culture and not at all squeamish to marry a relative as close as a cousin. That didn't prevent my distaste for the ending. Edmund and Fanny grew up as brother and sister... Their marriage is bordering on the incestual and therefore I found that I could not enjoy this Jane Austen novel like I have so many others.

This is the best book I've found so far to help my kids learn the names of the months. The author has written a short verse about each pair of months (January-February, March-April, etc.), singling out things about the months that appeal to kids (like walking in the snow and drinking cocoa in Jan.-Feb. and having a cookout and watching fireworks in July-August). The illustrations are very eye-catching and humorous. My daughters, 5 and 4, both enjoy the book. My one small quibble is that the verses are not something that would be easily memorized by a young child.

Each book that I read by Carol Shields only strengthens my admiration. "The Orange Fish", a collection of short stories, is my recent discovery. Although one of her earliest collections, it still bears her signature mark of strong, daring prose/poetry that draws you into the individual worlds of each story. Most of the stories deal with simple, daily occurrences, with every truthful word Carol Shields invites the reader to enter. You feel as if you are interacting with the characters and talking with Kay about her troubled marriage over a cup of tea in "Times of Sickness and Health." You root for the success of Marta's glass-blowing movies in "Collision." You sympathize with Meershank's writer's block in "Block Out." In effect, as the reader, you inhabit the individual world of each story and want to stay longer. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to read about ordinary people reflected through the mirror of powerful prose.

Warn[...]P>The main character, an affable Canadian named Larry Weller, is in a constant state of acute bemusement. We meet him as a young man, we see him (via flashbacks) as a teenager, and we follow him all the way to his late 40s, and the bemusement never changes, never alters, and frankly my dear, grows VERY OLD very quickly. Gosh, people, Larry is a person on this earth! Everything causes him wonder...from his choice of words to his hair, to his brain, to his penis. Nevermind that this sweet naif has a very successful life as a landscape artist who specializes in intricate mazes (oooh! a metaphor!). He is simply a bewildered soul.My third strong objection to the book is in its style. At first, I liked it. As Shields starts each new chapter of Larry's life, she explains, as though we do not already know it, who the main characters are, and where Larry has come from. By the middle of the book, this was annoying in the extreme. By the end, it was hard to take...but was only one of the things I couldn't stand.

My final objection is Larry's constant minute attention to the aging process, which begins long before he even reaches his thirties. Show me a man in his sixties, who perhaps has real problems with aging, and I might pay attention. This just got on my nerves.

I rarely react this strongly to a book, but the only reason I finished it was so I could write an honest review, and because Carol Shields is so very highly regarded. I guess I simply missed the point.

Carol Shields has a way of writing about the ordinary that elevates it to the sublime. We follow Larry, an ordinary guy, through his life through jumps in time of several years at a leap. Through the chapters, we follow him through a callow youth, through a first marriage and parenthood, divorce, his parents and sister's relationships with him and each other, remarriage and re-divorce, and most central to the book, his mundane job and rise to stellar status in his field of maze designer, of all things. But of course the maze is a metaphor for the complexities of life, trying to find ones way in the world. The dinner party at the end is clearly meant to represent the 'goal,' the center of the maze, but it's left to the readers to decide if Larry is likely to find his way out again.
A lovely tour de force.

Larry, the eponymous protagonist, is a late 20th century man who drifts through relationships as he drifts through his work. He, like his parents, seems to have life happen to him rather than helping it along. The results are hilarious and sad alternately. Each chapter is a short story in itself and the last chapter, "Larry's Party", is simply the best depiction of a dinner party and the table talk shows Ms Shields ear for conversation and is brilliant. I read 75-100 books per year and this is only the second one in my life where I had to write the author. There is a correlation in this book to Richard Ford's Independence Day and The Sportswriter but not as dark

I fully agree with Diane Cramer's customer review. To which I'll add that Shields makes many clever moves here--"Unless" is a great book about writing, about the impulse towards fiction, the necessity of writing, its healing aspects, the nuts and bolts.

Her feminist rants struck me as full of Irony especially as she is Wrong about the imagined feminist dilemma of the traumatized daughter, and with Reta's famed French mentor, the reining Canadian feminist who, as the world turns, has been traumatized by her own mother. So, the rage against male-domination is layered here, as is almost everything Shields touches.

At one point she has the mother/author Reta dismissing all politics, yet it is a political event that is pivotal, if swiftly handled in "Unless". I disagree with those who say this book is feminine in any traditional sense. Shields is able to "do" philosophy beautifully. Philosophy as it intersects especially with language--those Chapter headings are meditations on words that turn lives, are alluring. She is a philosopher And a story teller, showing the strange way that thought and events can converge and/or diverge. She does this so naturally, like no one else I've ever read.

As for the repeated theme of "goodness," that is also handled ironically, especially as Cramer has written, she achieves greatness here. A multi-dimensional book. No easy way to categorize it, in my opinion. Its plot shows the juxtapostions of living a life vs meditating and thinking on that life. Which is after all, true for all of us, conscious or not. There are continual shocks of self-recognition here. Nothing simplistic or purely domestic at all. And now I'm off to read the rest of her ouvre, which I've not yet done.

Women novelists dominate a genre in fiction that attract mostly female readers. These writers specialise in stories about ordinary lives. Burrowing deep into the psyche of people who live normal unexceptional lives, these stories typically explore the interiors of our human existence for dark troubled spots that lie just beneath the surface, waiting to explode and when they do, the fallout is undoubtedly damaging though seldom sensational. Anita Brookner is one such writer. Carol Shields is another. If you're male and don't consider yourself the sensitive type, chances are that you're not going to enjoy such books. Unless you read for the pleasure of language and derive adequate compensation from oodles of tremulously and articulately written prose.

"Unless", Carol Shields' latest and possibly last novel, is as the titled preposition suggests. It's one long drawn out pause, during which our heroine Reta Winters strikes a pose as she ponders over the myriad details of her life and in the process questions their significance. She ruminates over her accidental career transition from translator of memoirs to light fiction novelist, the routine itinerary of her book tours, her regular morning coffee gathering with fellow feminists and friends, visits to the neighbourhood library, her complacent yet unconscious relationship with her husband Tom and three teenage daughters, Norah, Christine and Natalie, etc.

Reta's bout of self examination is sparked off by Norah's sudden abandonment of home and college to sit by the roadside begging with a signboard that says "goodness" hung around her neck. Was she somehow responsible for Norah's inexplicable act of surrender ? Did she cause Norah to despair at such a tender age of ever leading a life of significance ? As Reta's internal dialogue runs its course and the story draws to a close, she learns a few things about herself and about the possibilities of life. Despite her new male editor's pushiness, she shows she can still after all stand her ground and maintain creative control over the second light fiction novel she is writing. On the other hand, Reta's self absorption makes her blind to the loneliness of her mother-in-law whom she thinks is congenitally silent until she learns that the old lady opened up to a complete stranger one evening when the family was away from home.

The mystery behind Norah's sudden turn is revealed in the last chapter. I won't say what it is so as not to spoil it for readers. While sufficiently explanatory, it is also not entirely satisfying. It lets Reta off the hook somewhat but it did bring her self awareness if nothing else.

"Unless" has been highly praised by critics. It was shortlisted for the Booker and appears on the Orange Prize longlist. While by no means a spectacular piece of work, Shields' trademark qualities are stamped all over it. Beautifully articulate and well written, "Unless" will appeal to readers who love the brooding intimacy of female contemplation.

Two big time winners are paired in this audio book - author Carol Shields took home the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for "The Stone Diaries," and actor Joan Allen has been thrice nominated for an Academy Award and twice named for a Tony.

Allen, a Broadway and film veteran, delivers a consummate reading of this story of one family's tragedy set amidst life on the cusp of the 21st century. Listeners will be rapt - seduced by Allen's voice and luxuriating in the author's remarkable prose.

Enjoying the fruits of success as a writer and translator, Reta Winters has every reason to believe she has it all - a devoted husband, three outstanding daughters, and a covey of good friends. Her world is tilted when her oldest child leaves college, and deserts family and boyfriend to take up residence on a street corner with a sign reading "Goodness."

Understandably anguished Reta tries to fathom what might have caused her daughter to take such action. It is in this search that listeners will find a sometimes disturbing, at other times heartening view of life as it is today.

- Gail Cooke

I was disappointed in The Stone Diaries--especially after a really good start to the story (Daisy's birth and the descriptions of Mercy). I am a voracious reader and have a degree in English Lit. Although I thought that The Stone Diaries was well written, technically, and it was a readable story, it was forgettable. I finished the book last week, and the other day I was trying to remember what book I had just finished, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember. It's not the sad or mundane life of Daisy that left me unaffected...I think it was the difficulty to relate to the characters and the author's failure to make them sympathetic.

I like historical novels with fact mixed with fiction. However, with the Stone Diaries, I was uncertain whether Daisy was a real person, and I was baffled by the photos.

I will not run out and read any more of Carol Shields' books. I like to read novels that will make me look at life differently and help me to understand people better. The Stone Diaries was okay, but I can't imagine how it won the Pulitzer Prize.

I liked the unique writing style Ms. Shields has used. I've never read anything like it. At various chapters of the book she switched from 1st person then to third; told the story by way of letters; and also told the story by describing each character's perceptions. Somehow, all these writing techniques flowed together nicely. Unfortunately, Daisy's life wasn't all that interesting. And because the chapters were divided by the different milestones of Daisy's life, I never felt as if I got to know any of the multitudes of characters on a level where I could emphathize/sympathize/ or even like them. Parts of the story were painfully slow, especially at the end where Ms. Shields chose to wax philosophical (zzzzzz). Okay, already. I get it. Daisy was quite a gal, too bad about her mum.

Also, there were too many rock anaologies. To the point where it seemed forced. Ms. Shields is too good of a writer for that crap.

I think it would have helped if the novel had more of a story to it and instead of all the well-written (but tedious) prose, how about some dialogue? How about some meat to the story?

In many ways, Daisy Goodwill Flett lived an ordinary life. She went to school, had two great girlfriends, got married, raised a family, retired to Florida as a widower, and died after a long illness at a convalescence home. Many things occurred during Daisy's life which make you realize that every life contains extraordinary chapters that are not shared with the outside world. In Daisy's case, her own children never knew that she had been married prior to marrying their father, and that her husband died by falling drunk off a balcony during their honeymoon.

The first chapter of this book is narrated by Daisy. The rest are narrated in the third person, and chronicle events rather than feelings. This was intentional; the author focused on life's events rather than feelings. By doing so, we never get a clear sense of Daisy's personality. This sense of disconnection from Daisy's thoughts is furthered by the absence of a photograph of Daisy, even while there are photos of Daisy's children, friends, husbands and grandchildren.

So who is Daisy? Daisy is defined by what happens to her, rather than what she is like as a person...as we all are. Daisy's mother died in childbirth. Daisy's father built a monument as tribute to her mother. Daisy's husband died on their honeymoon. Daisy became Ms. Green Thumb, the author of a newspaper column on gardening. We are told who Daisy is through a collection of letters, diary entries, and opinions by others, but not by Daisy herself.

Only on her deathbed do we get a true sense of what Daisy thinks. The author seems to be saying that once we are forced to stop and sit still, and quit occupying our time with the mundane details of daily life, we finally allow ourselves to contemplate our own selves. Near Daisy's death we finally learn how Daisy has ached her whole life for a family, how akward she felt with even her second husband, the supposed love of her life.

This was an extremely creative literary effort by the author. It really made me consider how much time we waste, and how little we know about the ones we truly love. We truly define ourselves and others by actions, rather than personalities, ideas, or feelings. The sense of disconnection between Daisy and the reader, however, would not induce me to read this novel again. It is what people believe and feel that makes them interesting characters. Like her children, readers never really know Daisy.

Of the hundreds of short story collections I have read, this is without a doubt the worst. The writing in this book is devoid of any style whatsoever. The stories are so lifeless that the words on the page actually look boring in of themselves.

Buy this book if only for Adam Marshall Johnson's "Your Own Backyard"--an astounding and astute look at the father/troubled son relationship. Also includes humorous offerings on your standard themes of sex and love. This is by far the best of the "Fiction Workshop" series. You'll keep this one under your bed and reread it when you're between books.

I found this to be an extremely enjoyable read. Here you plunge into the writings of young writers whose name rings no bell whatsoever, only to be refreshed and inspired by their "diamond-in-the-rough" talent. I can not think of a more fulfilling way to stay on top of the burgeoning crop of new fiction writers, and I am thankful for this opportunity.