Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0679310711, Paperback)

What are those life experiences that catch us by surprise, that haven't ever been a part of our discussions or readings because they lie beyond the limit of words, the boundaries of licence or the will to articulate?

When Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson began asking other women - friends, colleagues, family members - what experiences had amazed them, disappointed them, which ones they had been unprepared for, the responses were immediate. Many women reacted as though this was something they had been waiting to be asked, for years. Silences had been observed - and needed to be broken.

Dropped Threads is the treasure trove of reflective writings that emerged. From a wide range of professions and lifestyles, the pieces are immediate, intelligent and revealing. Many names will be familiar: Margaret Atwood, Eleanor Wachtel, Bonnie Burnard, June Callwood, Marni Jackson, Sharon Butala. But there are also revelatory pieces from women whose names will not be familiar: academics, politicians, homemakers, lawyers. Whether in the form of personal essay or fiction, these splendid, diverse, often tender, sometimes disturbing personal accounts will grip readers' minds and emotions and provide that age-old literary hook - the shock of recognition. The afterword by Carol Shields promises a characteristically gentle unfolding and an expansion on the theme as it relates to her personally.

A beautifully woven tapestry of the perspectives and voices of women on the silences that women still keep, this anthology includes essays that are broad-ranging in their subject matter: vanity, power in the workplace, promiscuity, spirituality. Others are distinctly personal: family secrets, abortion, middle-age lust, the liberating powers of belly dancing.

Dropped Threads offers a community of voices that readers - not just women - will want to hear, for the experiences are ultimately those that give us our jagged human dimensions of joy and sorrow. Perhaps readers will also find the strength to examine their own areas of surprise and silences in the process.