Alice Munro: literary world shaken by revelation of daughter’s abuse

TTributes poured in from across the literary world following the death in May at age 92 of Nobel Prize-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro, credited with perfecting the contemporary short story. But Munro’s many admirers must now grapple with a darker aspect of her legacy that has just come to light.

In a moving essay by Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s youngest daughter, who is now 58—published Sunday on Toronto Star next to an article reported by the newspaper—Skinner reveals that she was sexually abused by her stepfather, Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, from the age of 9, and that when she informed Munro about the abuse years later, the celebrated writer turned a blind eye and supported her attacker daughter.

The revelation of what until now had been a long-standing family secret shook Munro’s readers and colleagues, whose it works it often explored themes of women’s lives, complex family dynamics, sex, trauma, and secrecy.

According to Skinner, Fremlin, a cartographer who died in 2013, climbed into bed with her when she was 9 and touched her inappropriately. She also detailed how, during her childhood, when the two were alone, Fremlin would tell lewd jokes, pressure her about her “sex life,” describe Munro’s “sexual needs” to her, and expose himself and occasionally masturbate in front of her. .

“At the time, I didn’t know this was abuse. I thought I was doing a good job of preventing abuse by looking away and ignoring their stories,” Skinner writes.

Skinner says she first revealed Fremlin’s abuse to Munro when she was 25, having been hesitant to open up about it before, fearing her mother’s reaction. “All my life I have been afraid that you would blame me for what happened,” Skinner wrote in 1992. letter, parts of which she shared with the Star.

Skinner’s silent detachment continued until she read a 2004 article New York Times history about Munro, in which his mother praised Fremlin.

“I wanted to speak openly. I wanted to tell the truth. That’s when I went to the police to report my abuse,” recalls Skinner. “For a long time I told myself that enduring my pain at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing, contributing to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Now, I was reclaiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of abuse and returning it to Fremlin.”

In 2005, Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and sentenced without trial after pleading guilty. He was sentenced to two years probation, an outcome Skinner says she was pleased with because she did not want him to be punished nor did she believe he was still a threat to others due to his advanced age.

“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I did not deserve what had happened to me,” Skinner writes in his essay. She also hoped her story “would become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography, or event that didn’t grapple with the reality of what had happened to me, and the fact that my mother, faced with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay and protect, my abuser.

But that’s not how things happened. “My mother’s fame meant the silence continued,” Skinner writes. Munro retired in 2013 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a few months later.

“Many influential people knew something of my story,” writes Skinner, “but continued to support and add to a narrative they knew to be false.”

“Everyone knew,” Skinner’s stepmother, Carole Munro, told the Star, reporting being asked by a journalist at a dinner years ago about rumors relating to Skinner – and claiming they were true. (Robert Thacker, author of an acclaimed biography of Munro, told the Globe and Mail on Sunday that he was aware of the allegations about what happened to Skinner, who reached out to him directly before his book was published in 2005, but declined to mention the matter because he didn’t want to overreact to a sensitive family matter. )

Skinner’s story stayed out of the public eye. But now, with her essay sending shockwaves through the literary world, the narrative around her mother begins to change.

“I know I’m not alone in feeling deeply unnerved by what feels like a seismic shift in our understanding of someone who was formative to me and others as a writer,” said Pulitzer finalist Rebecca Makkai in a series of posts on X Reflecting on recent news.

“Many people reflexively deny that Alice Munro could have knowingly spent her life with the pedophile who abused her daughter, or rush to say they never liked her writing,” said Canadian magazine writer and editor Michelle Cyca. posted in X. “It’s harder to accept the truth that people who make transcendent art are capable of monstrous acts.”

“Alice Munro’s news is so completely and tragically consistent with the world she evoked in her stories – all those young people betrayed and sabotaged by adults who were supposed to care for them,” said the American. novelist and essayist Jess Row posted in X.

American novelist and essayist Brandon Taylor shared his gratitude to Skinner. “I’m so impressed with her courage,” he said in a series of posts on Xadding that her account was “personally devastating, as I recognize so much of my own story and the story in her experience.”

On a declaration of Munro’s Books, founded by Jim and Alice Munro but independently owned since 2014, the company said it “unequivocally supports Andrea Robin Skinner as she publicly shares her story of sexual abuse as a child.”

“Along with so many readers and writers, we will need time to absorb this news and the impact it could have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and links with the store we have already celebrated,” the statement adds.

In a statement co-published by the Munro family, Andrea and her three siblings — Andrew, Jenny and Sheila — thanked the owners and employees of Munro’s Books for “recognizing and honoring Andrea’s truth and for being very clear about her desire to end the legacy of silence.”

Although Skinner says she never reconciled with her mother before Munro’s death, she did so with her brothers – who reached out in 2014 to seek understanding and healing together and supported her in coming out publicly in what will surely put her mother’s reputation in disarray. in a very different place. light.

Skinner, for his part, made it clear that this is not about Alice Munro’s reputation. “I really hope this story isn’t about celebrities behaving badly,” she told Star. While some choose to do it simply “for the entertainment value,” she adds, “I really want my personal story to focus on the patterns of silencing, the tendency to do that in families and societies.”