Unless by Carol Shields

Unless, Carol Shields

Random House Canada, 321 pages

ISBN 0679311793

At forty-three, Reta Winters has settled into a groove of happy living. She lives in a big Ontario farmhouse with her doctor husband, their three daughters, and a greedy Golden Retriever named Pet. When the girls are at school, she writes, mostly English translations of the French feminist Danielle Westerman, who was one of her professors years ago. More recently, however, she has tried her hand at writing novels and has enjoyed some critical acclaim.

And then one awful Saturday morning, Reta’s family gets a phone call.  The town librarian has spotted Norah, the daughter who is away at university, sitting on a street corner in Toronto, holding a cardboard sign that says “Goodness.” Norah’s hair is matted, she is grubby, and she refuses to speak. More importantly, she refuses to come home. She has left her boyfriend, dropped out of school, and has dedicated herself to some sort of inner quest for goodness that can only be achieved by sitting on the corner of Bloor and Bathurst.  Reta’s happiness is shattered, and she applies her newly broken self to understanding her troubled, searching daughter.

A celebration of language and a brilliant examination of goodness, greatness, and a woman’s place in the world, Unless continues in the tradition established by Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
Riverhead Books, 468 pages
ISBN 9781594488399

Summer camp gives kids the chance to try out a brand-new identity with new friends in a new place, if only for a week or two before returning home. For fifteen year old Julie Jacobson of the very suburban Cindy Drive in Underhill, New York, an arts camp in the Berkshires allows her to step into the cosmopolitan world of New York City teenagers who discuss the merits of Anais Nin and dream of big futures. Julie, now Jules, transforms into a wry aspiring actress in a circle of cultured, ambitious friends who refer to themselves as The Interestings, and when she climbs into her mother’s green Dodge for the long ride home, nothing is more important to Jules than becoming worthy of the name.

The Interestings follows Jules and her friends from that first summer at Spirit-in-the-Woods camp through the remainder of their adolescence and their twenties to their fully established adult lives in New York City. Ethan, who drew and imagined his way out of his parents’ unhappy marriage, first fell in love with Jules but eventually married Ash. The combination of his talent and her connections led to a syndicated television show and success beyond their adolescent dreams. Although she is wildly happy for her two best friends, Jules needs a glass of wine before she can read their annual Christmas letter. It’s not that she has a bad life – she has a solid career in social work and is married to a kindhearted ultrasound technician – but she and Dennis struggle to pay the rent on their tiny apartment. And more than that, her life is fulfilling but perhaps not quite sophisticated enough to be an Interesting. The other three friends have found that their claim to the title, though solid, came at too high a price.

The Interestings is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Wolitzer has taken a long, hard look at the concept of the quest for success and explored its effects on integrity, happiness, and personal relationships. A must-read for those who enjoyed Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger.

Every Happy Family by Dede Crane

Every Happy Family, Dede Crane
Coteau Books, 247 pages
ISBN 9781550505481

On Sunday mornings, Jill makes a large pot of coffee, calls her mother, and contemplates the change and stress that have crept into the household unnoticed. It’s clear that the Wrights are at some sort of turning point; the days of Jill, Les and their three kids living peacefully under the same roof are coming to an end. Les and his sister are focused on finding their birth mother, Quinn is despondent after a breakup with his first serious girlfriend, and Beau desperately wants to spend his last two years of high school away from home. Then Jill receives a letter from Pema’s Tibetan birth mother, explaining that her situation is finally stable enough to invite Pema to join them at home in Nepal. And when she calls her mother to talk about this last problem, she discovers that her mother is taking in unsuitable boarders and is growing fuzzy about practical details. Jill finds it all overwhelming, and for the first time, she will be required to sit back and watch her family handle their personal crises without her guiding hand.

Every Happy Family follows Jill, Les, Quinn, Beau and Pema as they respond to their issues and live with the consequences. Tolstoy once observed that happy families are all alike, and that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Reflective and engaging, Crane explores individual unhappinesses in a largely functional, happy suburban family, focusing particularly on the conflicting needs of freedom and belonging. This work will strongly appeal to readers of Alice Munro, Sandra Birdsell, and David Bergen.

Vineyard Library

Letizia at Reading, Interrupted posted this lovely image, which I thought I’d share here:

Vineyard Library.

via Vineyard Library.

The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
HarperCollins, 324 pages
ISBN 9781443422666

Genetics professor Don Tillman organizes his fridge around a seven-day preplanned supper rotation. He follows a rigid daily schedule, considers a Gore-Tex jacket perfectly acceptable attire for fine dining, and misreads social cues all the time. Despite the evidence, he fails to see that his lecture on Asperger’s Syndrome might somehow be relevant to his own life. All Don knows is that he’s single, he’s estranged from his family, and he has two friends in the world.

As he approaches his fortieth birthday, Don decides that it’s time to get married. He’s a dating disaster; he doesn’t know how to make small talk, he argues over trivial details, and he offends his dates left, right, and centre. His last date abandoned him in the ice-cream line and he’d rather not relive that experience, so he devises a sixteen-page questionnaire designed to empirically identify his ideal woman. He calls it “The Wife Project.”

The Wife Project leads Don to Rosie, who definitely does not meet the stringent criteria. She does, however, intrigue Don with a project of her own. And when Don ventures to step out of the box he inhabits, he learns how to make life with Asperger’s a little more livable.

Funny, touching, and emotionally astute, this novel will appeal to readers of Lisa Genova’s Left Neglected and Melissa Bank’s The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

The Man in the Shed by Lloyd Jones

The Man in the Shed, Lloyd Jones
Vintage Canada, 265 pages
ISBN 9780307400338

Most fiction about family life examines the relationships between the characters and the particular culture that has developed over time. But what of the spaces in between the individuals and the parts of the self that are unfamiliar to one’s nearest and dearest?

In his collection of short stories entitled The Man in the Shed, Lloyd Jones takes a hard look at these unknowable places and what happens to spouses, children and friends when they sense the presence of this otherness and don’t quite know what to do about it. The title story tells of a family who has allowed a recent immigrant to camp out in the backyard shed, unaware that an additional male presence will shift dynamics between the husband, his wife and his son. In “Where the Harleys live,” a romantic encounter played out nightly in an amateur theatre production begins to creeps into real life, violating the small town’s code of respectability. And “The Waiting Room” looks at the aching disappointment at the failure to conceive.

The Man in the Shed tells of loss and longing as its characters deal with the nameless spaces in their lives. The writing is beautiful, haunting and spare, and the stories are emotionally true without lapsing into sentimentality. A strong recommendation for readers of Alice Munro and Jane Urquhart.

Blood Sisters, Barbara & Stephanie Keating

Blood Sisters, Barbara & Stephanie Keating
Vintage Books, 595 pages
ISBN 9780099485148

Ever since the day that Hannah brought classmates Sarah and Camilla home for lunch at Langani Farm in the Kenya Highlands, the three girls have been inseparable. Their friendship was rather unexpected; Hannah was a bit awkward and had not made any friends at the boarding school during her first two years as a day pupil. She had, in fact, only invited the artistic Sarah and elegant Camilla to the farm at her mother’s urging. As it turned out, all three girls had been sitting on the social sidelines, and when they found each other, they became like sisters. Their friendship carried them through the school week, and most weekends, they came home with Hannah to enjoy the loving welcome and the pastoral beauty of the surroundings.

Once school was finished, the three girls began very different lives. Sarah returned to Ireland to study zoology at Dublin University, Camilla embarked on a successful modelling career in London, and Hannah followed her parents to Rhodesia, where they had been exiled without explanation. Hannah’s brother Piet was now running the farm, and he needed to be careful. Kenya was in a state of political upheaval, and many indigenous Kenyans were not happy about an Afrikaaner holding on to land they may view as rightly theirs.

As their twenty-first birthdays draw near, Hannah, Sarah and Camilla find that Kenya is calling them home, even if it is no longer the refuge they remember. They return to a newly independent Kenya, barely coping with a legacy of unresolved political tensions. They must get acquainted again with Kenya, and find their way despite the constant threat of violence.

Written by two sisters who grew up in Kenya, this richly atmospheric, highly emotional novel will appeal to readers who enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and Kristin Hannah’s The Winter Garden.

Sick in bed

I think this is the fourth time this year that my family has gotten the stomach flu, and at the moment, I’m out for the count.  I hope to post a review over the weekend for Barbara and Stephanie Keating’s Blood Sisters, which I enjoyed very much.  Now I’m going back to bed.

Daughters-in-Law, Joanna Trollope

Daughters-in-Law, Joanna Trollope

Touchstone, 336 pages

ISBN 9781451618389

 

Anthony and Rachel Brinkley have an enviable life.  Anthony still lives in the Suffolk farmhouse where he grew up, and turned his boyhood passion for sketching wildlife into a career as an acclaimed artist of local birds.  He married Rachel, who transformed the rundown house into a creative sanctuary and put all her remaining energy into raising their three boys:  Edward, Ralph, and Luke.  For over thirty years, Anthony and Rachel have shared this life, and now that their youngest son is getting married, everyone’s lives are about to change.

Nothing much changed when Edward and Ralph got married.  Edward married a quietly analytical Swedish scientist named Sigrid, and they live a politely detached life in London with their daughter.  Edward’s family visits the Suffolk farmhouse from time to time, and Edward makes himself available for regular phone chats.  Ralph’s wife, Petra, was an art student of Anthony’s, and Anthony and Rachel thought her calm, accepting nature might be helpful for their temperamental son.   Ralph and Petra got married at the Suffolk farmhouse and she comes over with their two little boys nearly every day. 

But Luke is a different story.  His bride, Charlotte, does not want to be subsumed into the Brinkley clan; she would prefer to make her own home with Luke and establish herself as its matriarch. 

Then Ralph loses his job, detaches emotionally from his wife, and throws himself into a downward spiral.  Rachel tries to help by summoning Anthony, Edward and Luke into supportive positions.  But the daughters-in-law view Rachel’s actions as interference, and suddenly, the Suffolk farmhouse is no longer the centre of the Brinkley’s lives. 

A thoughtful, even-handed examination of the relationships between parents, their adult children, and their adult children’s families, Daughters-in-Law is highly recommended for readers who enjoy domestic drama.

 

 

Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Pantheon, 144 pages

ISBN 9780679732419

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a writer and aviator.  She was married to Charles Lindbergh, and together, they had six children.  Understandably exhausted from her busy life, Lindbergh travelled to Florida’s Captiva Island to spend some time alone.  She walked on the beach, relaxed in the simple beauty of her surroundings, and reflected on what her life had become.  Gift from the Sea is a stream-of-consciousness account of her musings during that time, and its messages speak as truthfully about womanhood today as they did when the book was first published in 1955.

Lindbergh basks in the tranquility of pared-down living, which she appreciates precisely because the experience is so rare.  Her regular life is busy and noisy, spent satisfying the needs of her family, looking after domestic obligations, and working.  She observes that women give so much in so many different areas of their lives, and the natural result is that their energy drains away and they begin to forget who they are as people.  To replenish their inner reserve, Morrow suggests that women set aside some time every day to engage in creative activity alone.   She stresses the importance of retaining a strong sense of self in marriage and motherhood, and reminds the reader to accept the inevitable fluidity of life.

Gift from the Sea is a feminist classic, characterized by timeless wisdom and excellent writing.