Ode to Alice Munro

I know I have mentioned my admiration of Alice Munro before, but having just finished listening to one of her short story collections on CD -- "The Love of a Good Woman" (BBC Audiobooks America, 1999) -- motivates me to devote a post to her. I have read almost all of the work of this Canadian author who is an accomplished novelist but is best-known for her short stories. This particular collection includes stories set in Vancouver, where Munro spent some of her earlier years, and those set in rural Ontario, where Munro has lived for many years and where most of her stories are set. All Munro's stories are very character-focused, and the characters they focus on are what we might call "ordinary," not being urban, flashy, or particularly "successful" (no Manhattanesque young professional types!). For just a couple of examples from "The Love of a Good Woman": a mean, trapped-by-gender-expectations small-town landlady; a young, pregnant musician whose husband has died in the war and who lives with his judgmental sisters. The stories usually start with seemingly ordinary, everyday scenes and matters, but as they unfold, they surprise readers, sneaking up on us and without fanfare revealing events and issues that are far bigger. A word I think of when reading Munro is "fresh," because each story is original and usually surprising, not in the cliched O. Henry surprise-ending way, but in the way of making readers see life and people afresh. Munro is not afraid to show us the "underbelly" of "ordinary" people's lives; in fact, often her stories contain a sense of unease; some even produce a slight touch of the ominous. Yet the overall feeling of her stories is neither negative or positive about life, just very real. Yet all of this is done without showy writing or pyrotechnics; in fact, her stories are often deceptively simple. I wish I had adequate words to convey the richness of Munro's writing and the rewards of reading her work; I can't do her work full justice here, so I can only urge you to find and read one of her short story collections: I suggest beginning with "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" (2001), "Runaway" (2004), or "Too Much Happiness" (2009).