Carol Shields

Reta, a doctor’s wife and mother of three, is with her friend Danielle, for whom she translates from French into English. > It would be better (...) to use the word mind instead of heart; (...) referring to the heart as the seat of feelings is no longer in fashion, condemned by critics as evanescent. (...) Danielle pondered for a moment, then smiled at me affectionately yet mordantly, and placed her hand on her breast: but this is where I feel grief, she said, and tenderness . Is it possible to confront rationally a daughter’s abandonment, the profound grief that turns the small habits of life into “costume jewelry”?. > In our big, old house (...) we lived the life we chose long ago: abundant, intense, yet with interludes of peace, surrounded by furniture, books, soft cushions to lie upon, food in the fridge, even more in the freezer . Suddenly Norah, the eldest daughter, drops out of university, takes to the street to beg with a sign bearing the word “Goodness”. How to react? The malaise is so profound, invading every moment of life and engulfing the whole family, driving each of them to withdraw into themselves, desperately trying to make sense of it, to offer help, to endure the sorrow while continuing the routine of daily life. Yet it is not possible; the suffering is too immense. Reta finds herself in the restroom of a restaurant and on impulse writes on the wall: > my heart is broken, which I would later recognize as an act dramatic, childish, indulgent, grandiose, and full of strength. (...) Immediately I felt relief between my ribs. (...) Something akin to joy swept over me, if only for a moment (...) as if under an enchantment. I had allowed myself to be receiver and transmitter at once, not a dead thing but a living link to all that would become unbearable suffering. In that moment I trusted my instinct, I set down words that revealed the truth, bearing witness to the most private and alarming of visions, rather than the self-pitying and melodramatic graffiti it actually was. Reta reacts by dedicating herself to writing a novel, a work of fiction she wants to be light, superficial, and blessed with a happy ending. Two fiances are meant to marry, but she is not convinced about marriage; she is not truly in love. How much of Reta’s suffering finds its way into the novel? And how much does it reflect her own marriage? Reta is at a crossroads: to give the story a dramatic twist, as her editor would like in order to turn it into a work of substance, or to stick to the original idea, namely a "romance > , aimed at the general reading public rather than the critics. Reta remains anchored to her project because she clings to hope, to the longing to find her daughter again. The protagonist does not marry; she chooses her own happiness; just as the writing of the novel concludes, Norah’s ordeal also comes to an end. Through a sequence of fortunate circumstances, the daughter, gravely ill, is rescued in extremis and treated; she returns to her family. In the hospital, the doctors notice that Norah has numerous burns; she had in fact been caught in a fire, when a young woman committed suicide by setting herself ablaze. In that moment Norah realized that the world is not good—that, on the contrary, injustice and existential suffering prevail outside the walls of home and university. God is dead! Like Simone Weil, who saw in her own physical wasting the only way to resurrect God, so Norah pursues her own self-destruction to cry out her longing for God, to bear witness to the desire for Goodness. And thus Norah’s behavior also has its logical explanation, an understandable motive: it is the mind, and not the heart, that is the source of Norah’s act. It is a complex and difficult book. The writing is elegant and masterly, the reading flows smoothly, enthralled by the beauty of the language. Too many themes are addressed, from philosophical questions to the female condition, down to the cathartic function of narrative imagination; missing, however, is psychological depth, which would better illuminate the motives behind Norah’s behavior and the reactions of Reta, her husband, and their other daughters. It is as though the author fled from the human condition to retreat into a metaphysical, political, and sociological dimension: an approach that dissipates the universality of a story told with such skill and preciousness. On the other hand, the use of unless” (in Italian “a meno che non”) presupposes the third conditional form, already indicative in itself of a deliberately sophisticated approach to narrative: perhaps greater simplicity would have lent more vigor to the story. Why not read it? It is difficult to grasp, at times prolix and tedious.