Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told

Carol Shields; Marjorie Anderson

ISBN 10: 0679312064 / ISBN 13: 9780679312062

Verlag: Vintage Canada, 2003

Beschreibung

Tight and unmarked- " The idea for Dropped Threads: What We Aren't Told came up between Carol Shields and longtime friend Marjorie Anderson over lunch. It appeared that after decades of feminism, the "women's network" still wasn't able to prevent women from being caught off-guard by life. There remained subjects women just didn't talk about or felt they couldn't talk about. Holes existed in the fabric of women's discourse, and they needed examining. They asked thirty-four women to write about moments in life that had taken them by surprise or experiences that received too little discussion, and then they compiled these pieces into a book. It became an instant number one bestseller, a book club's favorite and a runaway success. Dropped Threads, says Anderson, "tapped into a powerful need to share personal stories about life's defining moments of surprise and silence." Readers recognized themselves in these honest and intimate stories; there was something universal in these deeply personal accounts. Other stories and suggestions poured in. Dropped Threads would clearly be an ongoing project. Like the first volume, Dropped Threads 2 features stories by well-known novelists and journalists such as Jane Urquhart, Susan Swan, and Shelagh Rogers, but also many excellent new writers including teachers, mothers, a civil servant, a therapist. This triumphant follow-up received a starred first review in Quill and Quire magazine, which called it "compassionate and unflinching." The book deals with such difficult topics as loss, depression, disease, widowhood, violence, and coming to terms with death. Several stories address some of the darker sides of motherhood: - A mother describes how, while sleep-deprived and in a miserable marriage, she is shocked to find infanticide crossing her mind.- Another woman recounts a memory of her alcoholic mother demanding the children prove their loyalty in a terrifying way.- A woman desperate for children refers to the bleak truth as: "Another Christmas of feeling barren." Narrating the fertility treatment she undergoes, the hopes dashed, she is amusing in retrospect and yet brutally honest. While they deal with loss and trauma, the pieces show the path to some kind of acceptance, showing the authors' determination to learn from pain and pass on the wisdom gained. The volume also covers the rewards of learning to be a parent, choosing to remain single, or fitting in as a lesbian parent. It explores how women feel when something is missing in a friendship, how they experience discrimination, relationship challenges, and other emotions less easily defined but just as close to the bone: - Alison Wearing in "My Life as a Shadow" subtly describes allowing her personality to be subsumed by her boyfriend's.- Pamela Mala Sinha tells how, after suffering a brutal attack, she felt self-hatred and a longing for retribution.- Dana McNairn talks of her uncomfortable marriage to a man from a different social background: "I wanted to fit in with this strange, wondrous family who never raised their voices, never swore and never threw things at one another." Humour, a confiding tone, and beautiful writing elevate and enliven even the darkest stories. Details bring scenes vividly to life, so we feel we are in the room with Barbara Defago when the doctor tells her she has breast cancer, coolly dividing her life into a 'before and after.' Lucid, reflective and poignant, Dropped Threads 2 is for anyone interested in women's true stories.".

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 13474

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told
• Verlag: Vintage Canada
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0679312064
• ISBN-13: 9780679312062
• Einband: Softcover
• Zustand: As New

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

Continuing in the tradition of the beloved first volume, Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told taps into women’s compelling need to share their personal reflections on life’s defining moments of surprise and silence. These stories celebrate the female experience with an honesty
and intimacy that will take your breath away. Readers will explore what may be unfamiliar terrain, and will come away with the powerful knowledge of what it must be like to step into another woman’s shoes. “The fact is,” writes Adrienne Clarkson in the foreword, “none of us knows anything, and it is what happens to us in life that teaches us everything.”

Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson, with the assistance of Carol’s daughter Catherine, have gathered an astounding collection of fresh, beautifully crafted and original pieces by well-known Canadians, including Jane Urquhart, Susan Swan, Shelagh Rogers, Michele Landsberg, Elizabeth Hay, Billie Livingston, Sandra Martin and Flora MacDonald. As with the first book, this volume also includes contributions from new writers, women whose names you may not recognize but whose stories will resonate, move and inspire.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935, Carol Shields moved to Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England, and then obtained her M.A. at the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and wrote her first novel, Small Ceremonies, in 1976. Over the next three decades, Shields would become the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels , a book of criticism on Susanna Moodie and a biography of Jane Austen. Larry's Party (1997) was the novel that followed her Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Stone Diaries. Published in several countries, it was adapted into a musical stage play, won England’s Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize), given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. Shields’s final novel, Unless, was shortlisted for the Booker, Orange and Giller prizes and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and won the Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. Shields died on July 16, 2003, from complications of breast cancer, at age 68.


Marjorie Anderson met Carol Shields in the 1980s when both were teaching at the University of Manitoba. She is the seventh of eight children born to Asdis and Thorsteinn Anderson, Icelandic-Canadian fishers, farmers and storytellers from the hamlet of Libau on the edges of Lake Winnipeg. She has a PhD in literature and taught for seven years in the English department at the University of Manitoba before moving to the School of Business, where she became director of the communications programs for commerce and MBA students. She was awarded the university’s Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has taught in international programs. She recently gave up full-time teaching to spend more time on literary projects and continues to run a communication consultancy for academic and corporate clients. She and her husband live in Winnipeg and enjoy spending time with their four daughters and several grandchildren. Anderson's lifelong interest in writing and storytelling, and her involvement in editing and teaching over two decades, made the task of editing Dropped Threads and Dropped Threads 2 a comfortable one. She describes her collaboration with her friend Carol Shields as a great pleasure.