Do you know how certain books come to you precisely when they should? When you need them, or, at any rate, when you’re ready for them?

My parents now both attend the Auntie’s Bookstore Tuesday Morning Book Group that I used to lead, and this last month they read Carol Shields’ Unless. My mother gave me a copy, and said I’d love it. And she’s exactly right. I love it. I needed, at this exact moment in my life, such a novel.

I have found, working through this third manuscript, my protagonist a reflective teenager (I do think such an animal as a reflective teenager exists) an infinite, and surprising capacity to sympathize with parents. I understand now just how much of parenthood is failure. Despite all of our best intentions, we get it so wrong so often. Like any relationship in which we love with our arms thrown wide.

I’m two-thirds through Unless, and find Shields’ tone perfectly balanced, her characterizations beautifully rendered. I missed this: reading with so much attention.