Alice Munro’s latest short story collection, Too Much Happiness, is not a book for the faint of heart. The ten stories that comprise this collection seem exceptionally dark, even for a writer not known for happy endings. Fortunately this bleak outlook is somewhat redeemed (at least for me) by Munro’s practice of giving her protagonists, however fleeting or subtle it may be, some sort of epiphany or moment of awareness at the end. The stories, of course, are still vintage Munro—carefully observed, always surprising, complex, yet accessible, with fully imagined characters who, because of their striking singularity, emerge as very real people. Once again Munro manages to transcend the genre in which she labors, creating stories that because of their richness and depth are often as satisfying as full-blown novels.
Here’s one critic’s assessment that captures beautifully the magic of her magnificent talent:
One Alice Munro short story has the power of many novels. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavor of a life in 30 pages. She tells us what it is to be a human being. She is wholly without cliche. At the end of one of her stories you have to pause, catch your breath, come up for air. (Garan Holcombe writing for The British Council, 2008; read full article here)
Perhaps the only person who could have put it better than that is Munro herself—who is quoted as saying about her work—“I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the ‘what happens’ but the way everything happens”
Be prepared to be astonished.
-Billie
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