319 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 2012 by McClelland & Stewart.
With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.
I enjoyed this collection of short stories, but they did not quite hit the high notes of much of her previous work.
From what I remember, Jonathan Frantzen is a fan of Alice Munro. If you don't have enough time to read a novel, read a story by Alice Munro -- that's his advice as I understood it. And that's what I did and enjoyed. A story reads in three hours, ideal for a slow afternoon in the park at the weekend.
There is probably a deep analysis, or even several, to each story. I'm not going to try to analyse the stories here in this review now. What I like, what I admire, is how Munro manages to take me out of the role of reader. The stories touch me.
I read "Dear Life" and "Too Much Happiness" in parallel. Some stories I have read several times: "Train", "Dimensions", "In Sight of the Lake" (inside?).
These books will certainly stay on my shelf and I will pull them out from time …
From what I remember, Jonathan Frantzen is a fan of Alice Munro. If you don't have enough time to read a novel, read a story by Alice Munro -- that's his advice as I understood it. And that's what I did and enjoyed. A story reads in three hours, ideal for a slow afternoon in the park at the weekend.
There is probably a deep analysis, or even several, to each story. I'm not going to try to analyse the stories here in this review now. What I like, what I admire, is how Munro manages to take me out of the role of reader. The stories touch me.
I read "Dear Life" and "Too Much Happiness" in parallel. Some stories I have read several times: "Train", "Dimensions", "In Sight of the Lake" (inside?).
These books will certainly stay on my shelf and I will pull them out from time to time.
From what I remember, Jonathan Frantzen is a fan of Alice Munro. If you don't have enough time to read a novel, read a story by Alice Munro -- that's his advice as I understood it. And that's what I did and enjoyed. A story reads in three hours, ideal for a slow afternoon in the park at the weekend.
There is probably a deep analysis, or even several, to each story. I'm not going to try to analyse the stories here in this review now. What I like, what I admire, is how Munro manages to take me out of the role of reader. The stories touch me.
I read "Dear Life" and "Too Much Happiness" in parallel. Some stories I have read several times: "Train", "Dimensions", "In Sight of the Lake" (inside?).
These books will certainly stay on my shelf and I will pull them out from time …
From what I remember, Jonathan Frantzen is a fan of Alice Munro. If you don't have enough time to read a novel, read a story by Alice Munro -- that's his advice as I understood it. And that's what I did and enjoyed. A story reads in three hours, ideal for a slow afternoon in the park at the weekend.
There is probably a deep analysis, or even several, to each story. I'm not going to try to analyse the stories here in this review now. What I like, what I admire, is how Munro manages to take me out of the role of reader. The stories touch me.
I read "Dear Life" and "Too Much Happiness" in parallel. Some stories I have read several times: "Train", "Dimensions", "In Sight of the Lake" (inside?).
These books will certainly stay on my shelf and I will pull them out from time to time.
