SOURCE: Bond, Sue. Review of Unless, by Carol Shields. Journal of Australian Studies, no. 75 (2002): 164-66.

In the following review, Bond describes Unless as a powerful and funny novel that provides insight into the process of writing.

… unless, with its elegiac undertones, is a term used in logic, a word breathed by the hopeful or by writers of fiction wanting to prise open the crusted world and reveal another plane of being, which is similar in its geographical particulars and peopled by those who resemble ourselves.

(p 208)

So thinks the main character, Reta Winters, at the end of Unless by Carol Shields. It forms a frame for this funny and very strong novel with the epigraph from George Eliot, with its ‘roar which lies on the other side of silence’, for there is an event that needs to be uncovered in order for Reta and her family to know...