Pl. Catalunya, 39-41 08820 El Prat de Llobregat T 93.370.51.52 b.prat.am@diba.es Horari: dilluns de 15.30 a 21 Dimarts a divendres de 10 a 21 Dissabtes de 10 a 19
March 2015 ENGLISH READING CLUB
ENJOY READING!
CAROL SHIELDS
Unless
CAROL SHIELDS (June 2 1935 Illinois- July 16 2003, British Columbia)
-------------------------------- BIOGRAPHY Carol Ann Shields (nĂŠe Warner)
was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada. A United Nations scholarship encouraged Shields to spend a junior year abroad 1955–1956 at the University of Exeter in England. Later, Shields did post-graduate work at the University of Ottawa, where she received an MA in 1975. In 1955, while on British Council sponsored study week in Scotland, she met a Canadian engineering student, Donald Hugh Shields. The couple married in 1957 and moved to Canada, where they had a son and four daughters. Shields later became a Canadian citizen. In 1973, Shields became editorial assistant for the journal Canadian Slavonic Papers. In 1977, Shields was a sessional lecturer in the English Department at the University of Ottawa for a year. She later taught Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. From 1982 onward, Carol Shields taught in the English Department at the University of Manitoba. In 1996, she became chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. Shields was also intensely interested in Jane Austen. She wrote the biography entitled Jane Austen. In 2000, after Don's retirement, the couple moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where she died in 2003 of breast cancer at age 68. Shields' eldest daughter Anne Giardini is also a writer.
--------------------------------SELECTED WORKS
NOVELS Small Ceremonies, 1976. The Box Garden, 1977. Happenstance, 1980. A Fairly Conventional Woman, 1982. Swann: A Mystery, 1987. A Celibate Season, 1991. The Republic of Love, 1992 The Stone Diaries, 1993. Larry's Party, 1997. Unless, 2002.
POETRY Others, 1972. Intersect, 1974. Coming to Canada, 1992.
PLAYS Departures and Arrivals, 1990. Thirteen Hands, 1993. Fashion Power Guilt and the Charity of Families, 1995. Anniversary: A Comedy, 1998. Unless, 2005. Larry's Party - the Musical, 2000. Thirteen Hands and Other Plays, 2002.
------------------------------Unless
(2002)
For all of her days, Reta has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fictions. This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads “GOODNESS”. Reta’s search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditatin on where we find meaning and hope. *** “It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I’ve heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I’ve never understood what they meant.”