Back in November 2022 I read the first eight stories in Dear Life, a short story collection by Alice Munro. This week I read the remaining six stories. Overall I was very pleased with my first experience with reading stories by Alice Munro. I am not sure this collection was the best choice for a novice reader of Munro's stories, since it is a later collection, but there were some very good stories in the book.
Following are my thoughts on the last six stories in the collection:
"In Sight of the Lake" and "Dolly" are both about elderly women and on the sad side. Since I am also elderly it wasn't pleasant reading. But both were very good stories.
In "In Sight of the Lake," Nancy has an appointment with a doctor to discuss her "mind problem." She has to drive to a town nearby to find the doctor's office which she has never visited before. She gets lost and upset along the way. The ending surprised me.
The second story I read, "Dolly," was less straightforward. An older couple, not married but living together, are planning their deaths; he is 83, she is 71. The woman narrates the story. The man decides not to go ahead with the plan because the woman is much younger. Sometime after that, the couple meet a female friend from his past. The man, who is a poet, even wrote a poem about her. The narrator feels threatened by this experience. The end of this story is very poignant.
The last four works in the book are described by the author as "not quite stories." They are somewhat, but not entirely, autobiographical.
- "The Eye" goes back to Munro's childhood, and is about her relationship with her mother.
- "Night" describes a bout with appendicitis and the aftermath, and is about her relationship with her father. It is very touching.
- In "Voices," she goes with her mother to a dance at a neighbor's house. A prostitute is at the dance, and her mother is upset by this and they leave soon after they arrive. My least favorite story in this group.
- "Dear Life" covers a lot of ground, focusing on her father's various occupations and how they affected her life and her mother's gradual deterioration from Parkinson's disease.
With the exception of "Voices," I liked all of those, although I don't enjoy reading about unhappy childhoods, and that is what she seemed to be describing.
My post on the first eight stories in the collection is here. I read this book for the Canadian Reading Challenge. The author is Canadian and her stories often are set there.
"In Sight of the Lake" is available online on The Nobel Prize site. It isn't a very long story so it is easy to read online. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro for "master of the contemporary short story."
27 comments:
In my mind's eye, Tracy, you are younger than springtime, never elderly.
It sounds as though this collection really explores some deep and sometimes difficult human relationships and experiences, Tracy. I always respect an author who can do that sort of storytelling within the context of a short story. It sounds like the sort of collection, too, that's best read a little at a time, and not 'swallowed' all at once.
You are not elderly, you are retired! There's a big difference. I really like this cover although maybe it doesn't really convey what the stories are about. That must be hard for the art department if there is no single theme.
I have this on my shelf and will reread some of these. I greatly prefer her earlier stories, especially those from Dances of the Happy Shades. It does seem as we age we remember many things less fondly rather than more. Not sure if we are seeing things more clearly or less.
I too prefer the earlier stories. She kept cropping up in school in various writing & short story courses. You have peaked my curiosity with "In Sight of the Lake" & I've bookmarked the page--thanks!
Please read my post
Like Patti, I have this on my shelf. I've read a lot of Alice Munro...but I still have many of her books waiting for my attention.
Jerry, thanks for your kind thoughts. There are parts of me that feel elderly.
Margot, I like stories about relationships between people. Some of Munro's stories I have to read more than once to take in.
Constance, maybe you are right. All of the definitions of "elderly" are wishy-washy and may have good or bad connotations. I think of elderly as "over 70" and I am definitely that.
I agree with you on the cover. It is a nice cover, but I don't see that it reflects the content of the stories. And as I remember it, the stories are all over the place, not just focused on older people. A good set of stories though.
Patti, I have two other collections, Runaway and Too Much Happiness, but both of those were published later than 2000. I will have to look for some earlier books. Especially at the book sale later in the year, but I will probably have to look online.
I definitely don't have fond memories of my childhood, but probably not my parents fault, just my shyness and not fitting in that well with the rest of my family.
Casual Debris, I will definitely have to look into the earlier stories by Munro. It was good to actually finish reading one of my short story books for once, I have half-read ones all over the place.
George, I am glad to have discovered Alice Munro. I also like that many of her stories are set in Canada.
I see Munro is from Ontario so when I'm looking for an author to read for that province I'll seriously consider her. I actually did think I'd read something by her but can't see it on Fantastic Fiction. I'm wondering if it was a short story from a mixed author anthology.
Cath, If you are in a mood to read short stories, Alice Munro's short stories would be a good choice. But you will have no trouble finding fiction set there. There are lots and lots of mystery series set there (and in most if not all cases, the author is also Canadian), new and old.
The mystery site Stop You're Killing Me has a list:
http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/LocationCats/Canada/Ontario.html
Great review, Tracy...thanks so much.
Short stories are a great genre when I feel
I can't manage complex book (novel)
....for example after a bike accident !
(...feeling better,...but not yet in tip-top shape)
I just read a great short story about a woman
bringing her husband's ashes back to Ireland
by Louise Kennedy,. It was a gem!
Thanks for the excellent link to that site! I've bookmarked it. I didn't think I'd have a problem with Ontario, lots of choice there, hmmm... I wonder if Kelley Armstong was born there as I have the first book in her new series, A Rip in Time, to start. I'll have to look. I'm going to read a crime book by Gail Bowen for Saskatchewan so that's fine, but my real problem is Manitoba for April. I can't find anything that appeals and that site doesn't have anyhing either. I may skip next month.
An old FFB links list for Canadian books (on a week I was subbing for Patti, who'd called for a theme week and then had other business to attend to on the day of gathering): https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2011/11/fridays-forgotten-books-5440-edition-o.html
My childhood had a Very mixed bag of experiences, and my adolescence not much if any less so...my adult life has likewise not been extraordinarily good but certainly better than my youth, in most ways, even as some of the joints and organs are letting me know how late in middle age I am. I think we can forget the worst aspects of youth and have a too-rosy memory, or can grow more sophisticated in our realizations as we age and look back with (sometimes Even More) anger, but I think most of us might well have a pretty clear view of how things went, unless we're suppressing trauma or otherwise have some real or enforced gaps or distortions.
I like Munro's work a lot, though I think the only collections I have so far are DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES and TOO MUCH HAPPINESS, along with having her stories in magazine issues and various anthologies.
Nancy, I am very glad to hear that you are feeling better after your bike accident. I am sure it will take a while to recover completely from that.
I am very glad I discovered short stories after years of avoiding them and I enjoy stories from all genres. I wish I could read more but my reading has slowed down so I have to make time for both full length books and shorter pieces.
Cath, I know of one Canadian author from Manitoba, but you may have already rejected her. Margaret Laurence (1926-1987); her books were published in the 60s and 70s. The Stone Angel, the book I read by her, is the first in a series of five books about Manawaka, a fictional town in Manitoba. Hagar Shipley, a 90-year-old woman with health issues, looks back on her life. The fictional town is based on Laurence's hometown, Neepawa, Manitoba. The book is kind of depressing, not an upbeat book, but it was very good, well written.
Todd, I have checked out the post with links to reviews of Canadian books (and others) that you included, and read a few of the reviews, and will be reading more of them. I thank you especially for pointing me to Rick Robinson's review (at his old blog, The Broken Bullhorn) of Never Cry Wolf and And No Birds Sang by Farley Mowat.
Todd, it would be interesting to know how many people have bad memories of their childhood. Certainly I experienced no real traumas, and I know my parents loved me, but my memories are not happy ones.
I think the next collection of Munro stories I will read will be Runaway, because I have it now, and it only has eight stories, but each of them is around 40 pages, except for the last one which is 65 pages. I will look into getting a copy of Dance of the Happy Shades, the first collection.
Looks like an author whose stories I'd really like. Thanks for the review.
Harvee, I would recommend that anyone who likes short stories to try stories by Alice Munro. Not everyone likes her style of writing, though. I took a long time to come around to enjoying short stories of any type, so she is a new discovery for me.
I am in several book groups and can't really keep up but one of them is a group of lawyers who all clerked for the same judge who is nearly 90 and very melancholy since losing his wife. We only know each other through him because he had just one or two clerks per year but we have been Zooming with him once a month during the pandemic, usually with the assignment of a novel or short story. As we meet at 5 pm, you never know who will be stuck at work or in a car and you have to be thick-skinned because he is disappointed if we are not prepared - I had not read the Hemingway assignment yesterday because I both forgot and dislike Hemingway. Anyway, the assignment for next month is an Alice Munro story called The Love of a Good Woman.
Constance, that book club with the judge sounds very interesting. I don't know that I have read anything by Hemingway and I probably should.
Now you have me interested in that story. I looked it up, and it is a longer story, 76 pages in the book it was published in (also titled The Love of a Good Woman). Also it is available online at the New Yorker, but that is too long for me to read online. But I will look for a copy of that book, maybe waiting until the book sale to see what is available.
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