Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Unless by Carol Shields ::
by William the Bloody
Reta Winters is a writer, mother, and wife. To be fair, most of her writing is translating the works of world famous writer, Danielle Westerman, from French to English. Reta just wrote a little story of her own, though, and it was nicely received. Things were going well in general. Her husband's medical practice made good money. They were able to buy the nice country home of their dreams. Their eldest daughter Norah started university in Toronto. The younger daughters were doing well in school. Until one day...
Norah just vanished from school. She hadn't been to class. Her live-in boyfriend hadn't seen her either (last he knew she went to the store and just didn't come back). A week went by without a trace of her, then one of Reta's friends spotted her as she came out of the subway in Toronto. There she was; Norah was sitting on the sidewalk begging for spare change with a sign around her neck which read "Goodness." The friend of her mother approached her and Norah did not look up or speak, she would only nod her head and refused to leave. Now that they knew her whereabouts, the family relaxed some. Norah refused to come home, but so long as whenever they drove by that one square of pavement and she was there, they knew she was alive.
The question remained, what happened to her? Why stop her life short to panhandle? Dad stops his other hobbies and begin researching mental illnesses (being a doctor there must be some logical medical reason). Reta, however, decides the answer lies in her daughter's only thought: "Goodness." If she can somehow find and decipher this goodness, maybe she'll better understand her daughter. This quest for goodness seems to approach from many aspects of Reta's life whether she knows it or not, but sometimes finds herself so engulfed in the search, she overlooks what's right in front of her.
That's the very basic run down of the overall plot anyway. This is my first time reading a Carol Shields novel, and it was an interesting experience.
I enjoyed the author's descriptions of Reta's friends and their habits. Their weekly conversations at the coffee house was great incite not just into our main character, but them all. The book does have an odd flow about it, being from the point of view of the main character. It is her thought process after all, and everything in the book she already knows, and reveals it to us only when the events in the story make it so.
Reta most looks up to the author she translates for, Ms Westerman, whom is now elderly, but worldly and experienced, and a feminist. As as result, Reta, too, is quite feminist, but not overly so. Sure it bothers her when hearing interviews and celebrities are asked to mention their inspirations and they don't mention any women. Her gripe here, I suppose, is that they don't even seem to give the women any consideration at all, and she wishes they would do so.
The one thing I didn't really like about the book is in part, the authors style of writing certain areas. Whenever she is describing a conversation or a particular event, the writing is superb. But, when we are left to the musings of Reta's head, she gets a little too wordy and seems to want to impress us with the fact that she is well read and has an extensive vocabulary, even though it's only her internal monologue. This was very evident at the start of the book. It starts very slowly as a result and took me sometime to get through the first few chapters because I kept putting it down; I just couldn't take her seeming-pretentious speak in more than small doses.
Once the book got going in full course, it was quite good. We got to know the characters pretty well through Reta's eyes and see their own uniqueness. As each chapter gives more information to Norah's predicament on the street and the whole mystery into her sudden collapse unfolds more and more, I found it irresistible. I too, was desperately wondering what happened to Norah to cause such a mental collapse, and was eager for more insights.
All in all, it was pretty darn good. A rocky start and mild pretentiousness may alienate some.
B+
