Alice Munro

In Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, her masterful second collection of short fiction published in 1974 (Lives of Girls and Women is widely considered a novel), Alice Munro’s art takes a significant step forward. Though the subject matter remains much the same as in her first two books (stories of quotidian lives mainly told from female perspectives), in these stories she is extending her reach and experimenting with voice and form, light and dark. Many of the stories are built around memory and are often filled with expressions of disappointment, grief, regret, sometimes bewilderment, occasionally satisfaction with how things have turned out. In the breathtaking title story, Et is recalling her beautiful, impulsive, temperamental older sister Char. The sisters grow up, a tight-knit pair, in small-town Ontario, Char much more dramatic and worldly than her sister, and the more adventurous when it comes to love. Char’s early beau is Blaikie, whose family owns the local hotel and spends the off-season in California. When Blaikie marries someone else, Char takes poison. It’s Et who saves her. Later Char marries Arthur—a teacher, an unexceptional man—and lives an ordinary life. But the poison episode remains with Et, who one day makes a startling discovery in Char’s kitchen, which leaves her forever wondering what her sister might have been capable of. “How I Met My Husband” is narrated by Edie, who is recalling when she was fifteen and working as housekeeper for the Peebles, Dr. and Mrs., and their two small children. Though not farmers, the Peebles live in farming country, five miles outside of town. One day a small plane lands in the empty field across the road from the Peebles’ house. It turns out the pilot, Chris Watters, is touring his plane from town to town, and for a small fee will take people up to enjoy the view. By happenstance, Edie strikes up a casual friendship with Chris, which quickly becomes physical, and soon Edie’s head is filled with all kinds of romantic notions. When Chris moves on, leaving behind Edie’s broken heart and an empty promise to write to her, Edie’s life takes a turn she never saw coming. And “Executioners” is narrated by Helena, whose father is a drunk and whose inattentive mother nurses her grudges lovingly. Helena is tormented by her peers, ridiculed because of her odd clothing and her father’s dissipation. But Helena is a curious and generous child who, through an act of kindness, comes to the attention of Howard Troy, the shiftless son of the town bootlegger, Stump Troy. Howard starts bullying her, for no better reason than that “he may have seen the glimmer of a novel, interesting, surprising weakness.” The story turns on the family of Robina, Helena’s mother’s housekeeper, whose younger brothers are enemies of Stump Troy. In the story’s principal scene, Helena and Robina stand among the curious onlookers witnessing the fire that one night consumes the Troy family home. The event is tragic, but Helena views the spectacle coolly, reporting it in clinical terms, hinting but never overtly suggesting who might be responsible. Throughout, Munro’s prose is flawless: precise, understated, rarely drawing attention to itself, but shining nonetheless, evoking character and setting in painterly fashion: “Her tall flat body seemed to loosen, to swing like a door on its hinges, controlled, but dangerous if you got in the way.” In Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You people are often mysterious to each other (and sometimes to themselves), their actions troubling, their motives opaque. Munro’s narrators spend a good deal of time and mental effort wondering how and why they do the things they do. Munro seizes on this aspect of daily life and turns it into a major building block of her fiction. The result is a collection of poignant, thoughtful, loosely structured dramas that eloquently explore what it means to be human. Essential, vintage Alice Munro.… (mais)

A fine collection of stories from this year's Nobel prize winner. Many of these deal with women who came of age in the '50s discovering themselves in the '70s, and they are simply brilliant. Frequently I found myself at the end of a story, having been totally absorbed all along, wondering "how exactly did she get me here?". I re-read a couple of them, just for the pleasure of watching it all unfold when I knew how it would come out. The stories catch you up the way a novel does, and even if the characters fail to find full satisfaction, I was not disappointed once.
Reviewed in 2013… (mais)