Carol Shields Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Carol Shields discusses what inspired her to write Unless, how she became a writer and who has most influenced her writing.

Can you tell us how you became a writer?
I was a word-conscious child. My terrible early efforts -- by terrible, I mean derivative and unreflective -- were encouraged by my teachers and parents. I loved narrative; I knew that very early. And the act of writing was for me probably the most spiritual experience in my life. It seemed only natural to write the kind of books that I wanted to read.

What inspired you to write this particular book? Is there a story about the writing of this novel that begs to be told?
I wanted to write a novel after writing a biography and I found the voice of the novel in a short story I had previously published, "A Scarf," in Dressing Up for the Carnival. I wanted to write in the first person after many years of writing in the third person. A friend, Winnipeg writer Jake MacDonald, convinced me during one of our many long lunches that we novelists would be able to show more "decent" people in fiction if we wrote in the first person. His theory is that the third-person voice makes us nasty and ironic and less in tune with the world. I think he's right. I chose the voice of 44 year-old Reta Winters, a wife and mother, a writer and translator, who has suffered a grievous loss. ...