Word: unless
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Perched on an overstuffed armchair that looks like it might swallow her whole, Shields is talking about Reta Winters, the heroine of her new novel, Unless, but she isn't being cruel--or if she is, it's because life itself is cruel. Shields needed something terrible to happen to Reta because something terrible was happening to her. Shields, 66, is dying of breast cancer, and Unless will be her last word...
Last summer, when she sat down to write Unless, Shields knew what she did not want: a cancer book. Instead, she wrote about Reta, a middle-aged novelist whose daughter Norah has abruptly dropped out of college to panhandle on a Toronto street corner. Norah won't speak; she wears a sign around her neck that reads, simply, GOODNESS. Reta is Shields' not-quite alter ego, and like Shields, she is discovering a realm of pain she never knew existed. "The whole sense of sadness, of the end of things, of the broken vessel--everything is there," says Shields...
Reta narrates her predicament in the first person, circling it doggedly, chattily, sometimes with a deliciously malicious wit, taking us inside her domestic routines, her comfortable, functional marriage, her kaffeeklatsch, her struggles with her own new book. (Along with everything else, Unless is rich with practical advice for the would-be novelist.) Shields swings easily from comedy to tragedy and back again--she says she doesn't really believe in the distinction anyway--pausing in between for a disquisition on the biology of the trilobite (a prehistoric creepy-crawly), an expert demolition of literary journalists (no offense taken...
...United States: a widening gap between No. 1 and the rest. How is it articulated? The script is practically boilerplate. In polite government circles, the mantra is "unilateralism." Translation: "Those Americans throw their weight around. They respect neither treaties nor traditions. They don't care about their allies unless they need some special forces for Tora Bora. They bestride the world as if it were the Rose Garden of the White House - all theirs." In less polite circles, such as those that turned Berlin into an anti-American free-for-all while George W. visited last week, the message...
Levit-Shore said the committee’s recommendations will not be legitimate unless its members do not consult with local organizations like the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and Jane...