Unless, Carol Shields
ForumWorld Reading Circle
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1mirrani
It's a mystery without being a mystery. I got so caught up in it I devoured the book. The little things, like on page 34, where there's a description of the house (which isn't used much after, so why the lengthy side step?) that ended with "People have probably been happy in this house," which I liked.
Talking of animals like rolly pollys curling up on themselves to protect their bodies.
The act is called enrolment, a rather common behavior for arthropods, and it seems to me that this is what Tom has been doing these last few weeks. I clean my house and he "enrolls" into a silence that carries him further away from me than the fleeting figure of Mrs. McGinn, who rests like a dust mote in the corner of my eye, wondering why she was not invited to her friend's baby shower on that March evening back in 1961. p43
You kind of have to have read the book to understand it all, but that entire section.. Really MANY sections like this are just so good, you want to take note of everything.
"Trust. We've had it drilled into us at birth. Or rather, we emerge from the womb already trusting. Trusting the hand that's about to hold us."
"When does doubt cut in, you mean?"
"Immediately," I said. "One second after birth. I'm sure of it." p51-52
Loved this. The certainty and the feeling involved.
Lost. A part of my consciousness opened like the separation of a cloud onto scenes of abrupt absence. Sunlight fell with a thud on streets that Norah would never walk down, the stupid, dumb, dead sun. Her birthdays would go on without her, the first of May, ten years from now, or twenty. Somehow she had encountered a surfeit of what the world offered, and had taken an overdose she is not going to be able to survive. p89
Very emotionally descriptive too. I just can’t say enough about how I enjoyed this book. Though I was very sick and tired of the fuss over Norah.
When she looks back on her life, when she's a fifty-year-old Natalie, post-menopausal, savvy, sharp, a golf player, a maker of real estate deals, or eighty years old and rickety of bone, confined to a wheelchair--whatever she becomes she'll never remember this exchange between the two of us outside the bathroom door, her embarrassment about a girl with an unfortunate name, and her attempt to challenge me, her mother, about my own name, what it means to me.
Her life is building upward and outward, and so is Chris's. They don't know it, but they're in the midst of editing the childhood they want to remember and getting ready to live as we all have to live eventually, without our mothers. Three-quarters of their weight is memory at this point. I have no idea what they'll discard or what they'll decide to retain and embellish, and I have no certainty, either, of their ability to make sustaining choices. p105
I’m not a mother, but this motherly thought touched me and got me to thinking deeply of what I do and don’t remember, pondering why we remember anything, and so on.
People enter and exit the world; that's the real news. The rest is a residue, a crust left behind in the creases of the eye and mouth. p130
Short and sweet. This is talking about how they don’t like to watch the news, how all the headlines are bad things happening, or little non-important stories because nothing bad has happened.
Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy, fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're clear about your sexual direction, unless you're offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from frowning in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French. A moins que doesn't have quite the heft; sauf is crude. Unless is a miracle of language and perception. Danielle Westerman says in her most recent essay, "The Shadow on the Mind." It makes us anxious, makes us cunning. Cunning like the wolves that crop up in the most thrilling fairy tales. But it gives us hope. p149
Clearly this was where the title of the book came from and in some ways I felt it was thrown in, but in other ways I felt it fit. It’s hard to describe the way this book is written, because it tends to wander off on tangents, which isn’t distracting, but leaves you wondering if you’re ever going to go back to something.
We only appear to be rooted in time. Everywhere, if you listen closely, the spitting fuse of the future is crackling. p157
I can’t say how much I loved this line.
Talking of animals like rolly pollys curling up on themselves to protect their bodies.
The act is called enrolment, a rather common behavior for arthropods, and it seems to me that this is what Tom has been doing these last few weeks. I clean my house and he "enrolls" into a silence that carries him further away from me than the fleeting figure of Mrs. McGinn, who rests like a dust mote in the corner of my eye, wondering why she was not invited to her friend's baby shower on that March evening back in 1961. p43
You kind of have to have read the book to understand it all, but that entire section.. Really MANY sections like this are just so good, you want to take note of everything.
"Trust. We've had it drilled into us at birth. Or rather, we emerge from the womb already trusting. Trusting the hand that's about to hold us."
"When does doubt cut in, you mean?"
"Immediately," I said. "One second after birth. I'm sure of it." p51-52
Loved this. The certainty and the feeling involved.
Lost. A part of my consciousness opened like the separation of a cloud onto scenes of abrupt absence. Sunlight fell with a thud on streets that Norah would never walk down, the stupid, dumb, dead sun. Her birthdays would go on without her, the first of May, ten years from now, or twenty. Somehow she had encountered a surfeit of what the world offered, and had taken an overdose she is not going to be able to survive. p89
Very emotionally descriptive too. I just can’t say enough about how I enjoyed this book. Though I was very sick and tired of the fuss over Norah.
When she looks back on her life, when she's a fifty-year-old Natalie, post-menopausal, savvy, sharp, a golf player, a maker of real estate deals, or eighty years old and rickety of bone, confined to a wheelchair--whatever she becomes she'll never remember this exchange between the two of us outside the bathroom door, her embarrassment about a girl with an unfortunate name, and her attempt to challenge me, her mother, about my own name, what it means to me.
Her life is building upward and outward, and so is Chris's. They don't know it, but they're in the midst of editing the childhood they want to remember and getting ready to live as we all have to live eventually, without our mothers. Three-quarters of their weight is memory at this point. I have no idea what they'll discard or what they'll decide to retain and embellish, and I have no certainty, either, of their ability to make sustaining choices. p105
I’m not a mother, but this motherly thought touched me and got me to thinking deeply of what I do and don’t remember, pondering why we remember anything, and so on.
People enter and exit the world; that's the real news. The rest is a residue, a crust left behind in the creases of the eye and mouth. p130
Short and sweet. This is talking about how they don’t like to watch the news, how all the headlines are bad things happening, or little non-important stories because nothing bad has happened.
Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy, fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're clear about your sexual direction, unless you're offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from frowning in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French. A moins que doesn't have quite the heft; sauf is crude. Unless is a miracle of language and perception. Danielle Westerman says in her most recent essay, "The Shadow on the Mind." It makes us anxious, makes us cunning. Cunning like the wolves that crop up in the most thrilling fairy tales. But it gives us hope. p149
Clearly this was where the title of the book came from and in some ways I felt it was thrown in, but in other ways I felt it fit. It’s hard to describe the way this book is written, because it tends to wander off on tangents, which isn’t distracting, but leaves you wondering if you’re ever going to go back to something.
We only appear to be rooted in time. Everywhere, if you listen closely, the spitting fuse of the future is crackling. p157
I can’t say how much I loved this line.
