SOURCE: Ratcliffe, Sophie. “Typing while the World Howls.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5170 (3 May 2002): 22.

In the following review, Ratcliffe offers high praise for Unless, asserting that the story demonstrates Shields at her tragi-comic best.

In a teasing gesture towards critics who have suggested that she “doesn't do sadness very well”, Carol Shields begins her latest novel [Unless] on a low note. Reta Winters has led a good life so far—three children, a career as a novelist and translator, and a happy marriage. But, as her opening sentence reveals, she is “going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now”. Reta appears in Shields's last collection of stories, Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000), losing a scarf that she has just bought for her daughter. Now she seems to have lost the daughter too. Norah has dropped out of university and sits on a Toronto street corner “cross-legged...