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Dropped Threads: What We Aren't
Told - 2000
Dropped Threads 2: More of What We
Aren't Told - 2003
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Anthologies of women's
writing.
Edited by Carol Shields
and Marjorie Anderson.
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the book
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If the value of books were measured
by the insights stored within their pages, Dropped
Threads would be priceless…[This] is a wonderfully
well-written and excellently edited book that offers
such intimate insights that it sometimes seems like
a stream of consciousness. The compositions frequently
make the reader feel like an eavesdropper -- and an
extremely entertained one at that…The stories in Dropped
Threads cathartically tie up loose ends for their
writers, while providing readers with an exquisitely
crafted patchwork quilt of life experiences."
- Winnipeg
Free Press
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There are exciting and truly intimate
entries in this book…these women take ideas even secret
ones, and infuse them with poetry, scoured and buffed
sentences and …stopwatch comic timing…The true depth
of the collection is found in these women's clear
memories and their willingness to share."
- Quill &
Quire
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Over 80 Weeks on the Globe and
Mail bestseller list!
 The
idea came up over lunch between two old friends, Marjorie
Anderson and Carol Shields. They felt there was a need
for a book that, eschewing sensationalism and simplistic
answers, would examine the holes in the fabric of women's
talk of the last thirty or forty years. The contributors,
a cross-section of women, would be asked to explore defining
moments in their lives rarely aired in common discourse:
truths they had never shared, subjects they hadn't written
about before or otherwise found a place for. What Carol
and Marjorie wanted to hear about were the experiences
that had brought unexpected pleasure or disappointment,
that somehow had caught each woman by surprise. The pieces,
woven together, would be a tapestry of stories about things
women experience but don't talk about. The resulting book,
Dropped Threads, became an instant #1 national
bestseller.
"Our feeling was that women are
so busy protecting themselves and other people that they
still feel they have to keep quiet about some subjects,"
Carol Shields explained in an interview. Dropped Threads
takes as its model the kind of informal discussions women
have every day - over coffee, over lunch, over work, over
the Internet - and pushes them further, sometimes even
into painful territory. Subjects include work, menopause,
childbirth, a husband's terminal illness, the loss of
a child, getting old, the substance of women's friendships,
the power of sexual feelings, the power of power, and
that nagging question, "How do I look?" Some of the experiences
are instantly recognizable; others are bound to provoke
debate or inspire readers to examine their own lives more
closely.
The book is a collection of short,
engaging pieces by more than thirty women, from Newfoundland
to Vancouver Island. Many are mothers, some are grandmothers,
and many are professionals, including journalists, professors,
lawyers, musicians, a corporate events planner and a senator.
Readers will find the personal revelations of some of
their favourite authors here, such as Margaret Atwood,
Bonnie Burnard, Sharon Butala, Joan Barfoot, Joan Clark
and Katherine Govier.
With writing that is reflective,
often amusing, poignant, emotional and profound, Dropped
Threads is the first book to tackle the lesser-discussed
issues of middle age and is the first anthology the editors
have compiled together.
- randomhouse.ca
Read
Excerpts from Dropped Threads
Click
here to read the Foreword by Marjorie Anderson.
Click
here
to read the Afterword by Carol Shields.
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It's a collection of revealing essays and short stories
by 35 Canadian women at mid-life and beyond, reflecting
on the life events that caught them off guard and, somehow,
haven't been talked about…As it turns out, there are
many dropped threads in our lives. Weave them together
and you've got a tapestry."
- Bonnie Schiedel,
Chatelaine, April 2001
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Dropped Threads … is a collection
of 34 pieces by Canadian women in which they describe…everything
they never said or were not able to say before, but
which had tremendous power in their lives…[Senator Sharon
Carstairs's] essay about women in politics [is] clear-eyed
and devastating …Miriam Toews examines her father's
lifelong battle with depression, which culminated in
his suicide … with gentleness and insight … These are
all the conversations we would wish to have with friends
and these essays stimulate the sense of exuberance and
relief that one always feels after a long, self-revelatory
talk."
- Virginia Beaton,
Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 25 Feb 2001
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Contents
Click
here
to read the Table of Contents of Dropped Threads.
Click
here
to read the Table of Contents of Dropped Threads 2.
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.
- randomhouse.ca
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Dropped Threads is a much-awaited anthology
of essays and stories by Canadian women, including
celebrated writers as well as women who are neither
writers nor famous … The angst of the women in Dropped
Threads covers a wide spectrum."
- Paul Gessell,
Ottawa Citizen, 20 Jan 2001
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Reviews
Dropped Threads 2
Reviewed by Clara Thomas
Books in Canada
Adrienne Clarkson writes the Foreword
to this book; Marjorie Anderson, its chief editor, writes
the Introduction and Carol Shields the Afterword. Its
collection of "What We Aren't Told" confessionals has
impeccable credentials and an overall enthusiasm and professionalism
in its conception, planning, writing and publishing. Intrigued
by the unexpected success of the original Dropped Threads,
Shields and Anderson put out a general call from their
website for more essays. They also asked some known writers
who responded. The result is a wide-ranging volume whose
variety is best appreciated by a leisurely enjoyment of
a few at a time rather than a straightforward read-through.
I can well understand the enthusiasm with which Anderson
writes in her Introduction: "it was an exciting and consuming
task....The submissions poured in, each one moving in
some way for its honesty and intimacy." The sum-total
for the reader, however, would be overwhelming if taken
in one dose. A one-word description of the collection
would, I believe, be "unpredictable." It is that quality
that keeps the reader always questioning, always anxious
to turn the next page. ...
Dropped Threads
2
Reviewed by Kim Hughes
amazon.ca
It's impossible to overstate the impact
of the stories collected in the Dropped Threads 2
anthology, which is instructively subtitled More of
What We Aren't Told. A follow-up to 2001's bestselling
collection of the same name, Threads 2 places the
reader at the very intersection of 35 women's lives and
as might be expected, that means tragedy and comedy are
equally represented through tales of motherhood, sisterhood,
step-motherhood, and much, much more. Marquee names such
as novelists Jane Urquhart and Susan Swan, former politician
Flora MacDonald, and broadcaster Shelagh Rogers grab initial
attention, but all the women contributing end up stealing
our hearts, often with their breathtaking honesty. In
"In My Mother's Arms," writer Mary Jane Copps details
horrific childhood abuse at the hands of an alcoholic
mother in prose so urgent that we feel the heat of the
stove element beneath our hands. Sarah Harvey startles
with her frank confession of contemplating infanticide
in "Mother Interrupted," going on, improbably, to make
us see the lighter side of mental illness. Several stories
actually prompt tears, notably Mary J. Breen's quest for
familial understanding in "Nobody Needs to Know" and Debbie
Culbertson's coming-of-age-as-a-lesbian-with-children
tale, "A Place on the Pavement." Pamela Mala Sinha's story
"Hiding," meanwhile, may be the most horrifying yet riveting
depiction of rape ever recorded. On the other hand, C.J.
Papoutsis's child-rearing memoir, "They Didn't Come with
Instructions," is plain hilarious: "By the end of my first
week of mothering, my main impressions were that babies
were loud, smelly, and sticky and felt as if they were
broken." Karen Houle's vivid "Double Arc" presents language
so dexterous it could navigate a balancing beam: "Loving
a woman is like doing new math: sliding the red balls,
all at once, to the other side of the abacus. A satisfying
clacking sound--the sound of emphasis falling differently."
The vignettes presented in Threads 2 are more than just
true-life tales of survival and defeat, love and pain,
illness and recovery. They're balm for the spirit. Reading
just doesn't get any more satisfying than that.
- Kim Hughes (amazon.ca )
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