Dropped threads 2: more of what we aren't told

Dropped Threads 2, Edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson, Vintage Canada 2003, 380 pages.

With the recent death of celebrated Canadian writer Carol Shields, Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren't Told, co-edited by Shields and Marjorie Anderson, takes on increased significance as a fitting finale to Shields' career. This collection of personal essays by 35 Canadian women achieves the very thing that Shields accomplished in her own writing: it celebrates the strength of the female spirit in the face of public and private challenges.

Shields and Anderson realized the need for a second collection after the initial book, Dropped Threads: What We Aren't Told, received an overwhelmingly warm response from readers. Dropped Threads 2 features a variety of voices; essays by amateur writers are included alongside those of professional writers and well-known Canadian women. Women's experiences at all stages of life are presented and, as a result, readers will find relevance to their own lives.

In an April, 2003 interview published in The Globe and Mail, Shields spoke of wanting vast improvements in the second collection as compared with the first: "I wanted braver stories. Women were brave in the first book, but here, much braver." Examples of their veracity and candor are in the chronicles of early widowhood, infertility, post-partum depression and chronic illness. Two excellent essays concern the struggle with breast cancer, a topic that was not broached in the first collection.

Some of these essays are dark, disturbing stories of pain and adversity, which will send the reader reeling. These include Mary Jane Copps' story of the suffering she and her siblings endured under the care of their drug-addicted mother, and Lisa Gregoire's account of the abusive relationship she sustained while in an isolated Northern community.

The editors' accomplishment is in balancing these hard-hitting essays with narratives that are light and witty and yet still intimate, such as Elizabeth Hay's "10 Beauty Tips You Never Asked For," Carole Sabiston's "Conjuring Up a New Life," and Ann Dowsett Johnston's "The Boy Can't Sleep."

The collection is anchored by the writings of prominent Canadian women who draw upon their vast experiences to offer insight. Particularly notable is Michele Landsberg's "Don't Say Anything," a scathing indictment of Toronto's Havergal College and the anti-Semitism she encountered there in the 1940s. Flora MacDonald's "New Voices" reveals her hard-earned appreciation for the efforts of grassroots women in improving life in their developing countries. Maude Barlow offers a moving account of her 1991 trip to Iraq for an international women's peace mission. These pieces remind readers to look outside themselves to find solidarity with the world's women.

The prevailing sense throughout Dropped Threads 2 is of the power of the individual to reclaim control over her own life. Part of this process of reclamation is in the very act of writing and sharing; at the conclusion of a most troubling chronicle of a horrific sexual attack and its aftermath, Pamela Mala Sinha explains: "I know why I'm writing this now. This story no longer belongs only to me. It is yours now too. If you'll take it."

Her words are echoed by Carol Shields in her "Afterword": "Frequently we discover that what we believe to be singular is, in fact, universally experienced. No wonder Holocaust survivors seek each other out. No wonder those who have lost a child turn to others who have endured the same loss. We need these conversations desperately." Indeed, the acts of writing and reading these essays will inspire women to a renewed sense of their belonging within a vast and united community.

Colleen Crawley is an English literature teacher and mother of two children in Peterborough, Ont. She most recently reviewed Carol Shields' Unless for CNT.

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