Unless [Paperback]

Unfortunately, such laziness would do this rather wonderful and thought-provoking book a grave disservice - in that, although goodness - the idea of goodness, what it means to be good - is at the centre of this book, it shares that space with ruminations on the art of writing, and what it is to be a woman (and a woman writer, and a wife, and a mother, and a friend, and a person in the world) at the beginning of what we like to regard as a more enlightened time to be alive.

Reta Winters took her husband Tom's surname when they first got together (part of the reason being that she was originally Reta Summers and they both agreed that one of the seasons had to change). In lots of ways, this information (which is almost the opposite of a revelation, whatever the word for that is) contains the genesis of this novel writ small. They have three daughters together, Reta and Tom, the oldest of whom decides on the cusp of her nineteenth birthday to throw up her studies and live on the street with a simple cardboard sign - on which the word GOODNESS is written - on a string around her neck. Reta has no idea why her daughter has chosen this path and that - the abstract decision to withdraw from the life you are expected to live - throws the world out of kilter. To all intents and purposes life continues on as it did before (Reta and Tom still sleep together, Reta continues to write the sequel to her comic novel, the family entertain at Christmas). Beneath the surface, however, and within Reta, you realise that the world these characters inhabit has come to resemble nothing so much as the scab that forms over damaged skin.

The title of the book, and each of the chapter titles that follow, are made up of what Shields calls "little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs and prepositions) . . . words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, theretofore, instead, otherwise, despite, already and not yet." These words act as the "odd pieces of language" that cement the isolated events in a person's life to form "a coherent narrative." The adverbs and the prepositions, the words you do not notice, commingle with Reta's attempts to rebuke the various men in positions of authority who continually overlook the debt history owes to women (believing in part that her daughter's complaint has been brought on as a direct result of NOT BEING HEARD - which, in a way, as the climax reveals, is the case).

There is grit here and pain (that all too human attempt to comprehend that which is beyond comprehension: the actions of others), and the writing is deceptively easy on the eye (an ease that is assisted by Shields all-too-middle-class narrator, but that is the point - Reta didn't expect the world to let her down in the way that it has, pain happens to other people, pain is on the news not here, in my living room, at my dinner party, during Christmas). Unless is the kind of book that feels like streetlevel access to the underground (you're standing on a grill as a train thunders by beneath you, and the grill continues to rattle long after the train has passed): here is a thoughtful novel that lingers in your mind, shaky and insecure as one would be having grappled with big questions (and approached shaky answers, Mr Hornby - See! It can be done!!).

Although there is a gentleness to the telling (in that Shields' narratorial tone is always sensitive to the voice of her characters), Unless is steely in its penetration of life (of a certain kind of life), and resolute in its attempt to understand abstraction.

Other readers felt it had no plot. Again, Shields develops characters and not intrigues. She tells the story from Reta's point of view. The "plot" is in trying to comprehend the circumstances leading to her daughter's behavior, in figuring out if she, as a mother, has done something wrong, if the same thing will happen to her other children. Also, in figuring out what is goodness. Throughout the narrative, Shields exposes various forms of goodness.

This book is filled with interesting, down-to-earth characters, expertly developped by the author. The story contains many humorous touches, not the least of which are Reta's letters to various authors, as she complains about the non-representation of female writers in male writers' essays.

I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did.