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 of her celebrated treasures:
– ‘Boys and Girls’ (1964) –
In one of his earliest stories, Munro delved into what would become a signature theme: the complex and often fraught transition to adulthood.
Set on a fox farm and told from a young girl’s point of view, “Boys and Girls” explores gender conventions in small-town 1940s Ontario – Munro’s birthplace and home, and the setting for much of her work. writings.
The story was included in his first book “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968).
– ‘Real Beatings’ (1977) –
This story about everyday family violence in a rural Canadian town begins with stepmother Flo’s threat to administer a “real beating” to her impetuous teenage stepdaughter, Rose.
The girl’s imagination is awakened by the term, and she imagines carriages, horses and kings, but discovers a much more brutal reality when her father hits her with his belt.
Munro would delve deeper into the world of Flo and Rose in “Who Do You Think You Are?” (1978), a collection of interconnected stories about the two women that was nominated for the Booker Prize.
– ‘The Progress of Love’ (1985) –
Recalling her childhood, 30-something real estate agent Euphemia ponders her parents’ dysfunctional marriage and her decision to run away from home and reject everything they stood for.
Love throughout the story does not so much progress as it freezes and mixes with recriminations, and through Euphemia’s conflicted feelings, Munro explores how emotions evolve.
The characters “are so much like us that reading about them is sometimes emotionally risky,” wrote Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times in 1986.
– ‘The bear came over the mountain’ (1999) –
Sadness permeates this story about a man who loses his wife to Alzheimer’s disease, with Munro unflinchingly observing the devastating details of the disease as it erodes memory, language, and personality.
It was adapted into a film in 2006 as “Away from Her”, by fellow Canadian Sarah Polley and starring Julie Christie as the unhappy wife, earning two Oscar nominations, including best actress.
– ‘Corrie’ (2010) –
A deftly rendered central deception in this story misleads both reader and protagonist, showcasing Munro’s careful and intricate weaving of stories into deceptively banal settings.
Corrie, a rich young woman who seems destined for the life of a spinster, embarks on a years-long affair with an 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 potential whistleblower quiet.
But years later, she discovers that this was a lie and that Howard had been pocketing the money the whole time.
Munro, who liked to revisit and tweak his stories even years later, changed the ending of the version of “Corrie” that appeared in his collection “Dear Life” published in 2012.
For Munro, her stories “cause doubt,” Margaret Atwood said on The New Yorker Fiction podcast in 2019, “she liked to rethink things and wonder if she got it right the first time.”
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