from amazon:
Reta Winters has a loving family, good friends, and growing success as a writer of light fiction. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world, abandoning university to sit on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads only 'goodness'. As Reta seeks the causes of her daughter's retreat, her enquiry turns into an unflinching, often very funny meditation on society and where we find meaning and hope.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Being taken to the Sunday lunchtime meet-up.

Hello!

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Picked this up from the Greenwich meet today - looks interesting & will add to mt TBR. Hope to read soon.

I found this a really interesting and enjoyable read. The story is told through the mothers eyes in first person narrative but the fact that she is a writer herself and is exploring different themes/relationships that her characters will be subjected to ties in really well with her own musings on her troubled family life. Throughout the novel we are left to guess what has happened to the eldest daughter Nora just like the family are having to do for themselves and this adds a very intriguing edge to the story. Essentially it seems like a work based around feminist issues of women finding their way in society and this only made it richer for me.

Highly recommended.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I'm wrapping this one up for a game of steal or reveal and taking along to the meet. I hope whoever wins it enjoys it as much as I did :0)

My winnings from the bookswap game at today's meet, pleased not to have it 'stolen' from me as Carol Shields is one of those authors I've wanted to try.

I found this book to almost be a meditation rather than being heavily plot driven. A look at domestic feminism with a mostly un-disfunctional family at it's core made a pleasant change. Carol Shields had an author protagonist and so was writing about writing, but managed to not disappear up her own backside.
Sympathetic characters made this an interesting and easy read and it was one of those books that when you finish it you think 'that was a bit inconsequential' but you find yourself thinking back on.

Can't make up my mind about this book. Enjoyed the writing style but couldn't quite make up my mind what the author was trying to get across - thought provoking.
KORKY'S MUM

Do yourself a favour and read this beautiful book. This is the first I have read of Carol Shields but I am now completely hooked. Sucked into the characters and setting right from the opening pages.
KORKY'S DAD

Left on the windowsill inside Beau Reveil boulangerie-patisserie.