Alice Munro was best known as a master of the short story.
Paris:
Nobel Prize-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro was best known as a master of the short story. Here are five from her famous hoard:
– 'Boys and Girls' (1964) –
In one of her first stories, Munro delved into what would become a signature theme: the complex, often fraught transition to adulthood.
'Boys and Girls' is set on a fox farm and is told from the perspective of a young girl. It explores gender conventions in small-town Ontario in the 1940s – Munro's birthplace and home, and the setting for much of her writing.
The story was included in her first book “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968).
– 'Royal abuse' (1977) –
This story about everyday family violence in a rural Canadian town begins with stepmother Flo's threat to give her fiery teenage stepdaughter Rose a “royal beating.”
The girl's imagination is sparked by the term and she imagines chariots, horses and kings, but she discovers a much more brutal reality when her father hits her with his belt.
Munro would delve deeper into Flo and Rose's world in “Who Do You Think You Are?” (1978), a collection of interconnected stories about the two women nominated for the Booker Prize.
– 'The progress of love' (1985) –
Thirty-year-old real estate agent Euphemia reminisces about her childhood and reflects on her parents' dysfunctional marriage and her decision to run away from home and reject everything they stood for.
Love does not so much develop over the course of the story as it solidifies and becomes mixed with recriminations, and through Euphemia's conflicting feelings Munro's explores how emotions evolve.
The characters “are so like ourselves that it is sometimes emotionally risky to read about them,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates in the DailyExpertNews in 1986.
– 'The bear came over the mountain' (1999) –
Grief pervades this story of a man who loses his wife to Alzheimer's disease, with Munro determinedly observing the devastating details of the disease as it attacks memory, language and personality.
It was adapted into a film in 2006 as “Away from Her” by Canadian compatriot Sarah Polley and starring Julie Christie as the ill-fated woman, and earned two Oscar nominations, including Best Actress.
– 'Corrie' (2010) –
An expertly rendered central deception in this story deceives both the reader and the protagonist, demonstrating Munro's careful and intricate interweaving of storylines in deceptively banal settings.
Corrie, a young wealthy woman who seems destined to become a spinster, begins a long-term affair with architect Howard.
When he tells her that a mutual acquaintance has discovered their secret and is blackmailing them, Corrie agrees to pay a monthly stipend to keep the would-be traitor quiet.
But years later she discovers that this was a lie and that Howard had been pocketing the money all along.
Munro, who liked to revisit and adapt her stories even years later, changed the ending of the version of “Corrie” that appeared in her collection “Dear Life,” published in 2012.
For Munro, her stories cause “second thoughts,” Margaret Atwood said on The New Yorker Fiction podcast in 2019, “she enjoyed rethinking things and wondering if she got it right the first time.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
