Canadian short story writer, and 2013 Nobel laureate in fiction Alice Munro died on May 13 at the age of 92.
Munro was a giant of contemporary literature. That’s what the Nobel, and a lifetime achievement citation from the Man Booker International award, and the three Governor’s General awards from her native Canada evidence. But it seems strange to think of an unassuming person who primarily wrote about people from the small south Ontario town she came from via the seemingly humble form of the short story as a giant. That the characterization is undeniably correct is a testament to her unique talent, and her persistent drive to look deeper into the lives of her characters.
Her first short story collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades” in 1968 won that year’s Governor’s General award (Canada’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize), announcing a writer who had arrived fully formed. Her early stories often explored the struggles of girls and young women trying to find a place in the world that seemed hostile to their desires. In the story, “Boys and Girls,” from “Dance of the Happy Shades,” the young narrator in the rural town endeavors to avoid the domestic life of her mother, but also learns that the male-dominated spaces can be hostile to someone with other dreams.
Munro’s early prose is lowkey and spare, moving inexorably to an epiphanic moment where both the character and the reader are often surprised by a sudden swell of emotion or insight.
Munro’s style remained perfectly controlled throughout her career, but over time, the palate of her technique expanded, particularly in her use of a third-person omniscient narration and temporal shifts that allowed her to peer into the minds and motives of any character at any time.
This is perhaps best evidenced by her most famous story, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” collected in 2001’s “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” and later adapted into the 2006 movie “Away from Her” starring Julie Christie as the central character Fiona.
The story opens by describing the home Fiona grew up in, where she lived when she first met her eventual husband Grant: “Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish.”
Notice the incredible control and economy in the technique that manages to establish facts about Fiona’s background, and to give us Grant’s perspective on this information. This omniscience allows Munro to cover lots of storytelling territory in a limited amount of space on the page, as well as to zoom into moments where she peers into her characters’ deepest selves.
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain” shoots forward 50 years and we come to know that Fiona’s mind is failing and she will be moving into a care home where Grant will continue to visit her, even though she has little sense of who she is. One day Grant arrives for his visit and understands that his wife appears to be in a relationship with a man living at the care home, and complications ensue.
It is a juicy set-up, ripe for dramatic events, but Munro’s style was to always complicate the situation at hand, to use her unfailing eye to reveal layers to her characters beyond the perception of just about any other writer. By the end, the reader is aswirl in the full range of the characters’ competing desires.
We will not see a writer of this caliber again.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” by Victor Hugo
2. “Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune” by Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
3. “Sutherland Springs: God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town” by Joe Holley
4, “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr
5. “A Thousand Ships” by Natalie Haynes
— Robert O., Chicago
For Robert, I’m recommending a powerful historical novel told in an ingenious fashion, “The Report” by Jessica Francis Kane.
1. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
2. “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese
3. “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett
4. “Billy Summers” by Stephen King
5. “Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany” by Stephen E. Ambrose
— Linus P., Chicago
For Linus, I’m recommending one of Richard Russo’s longer novels that allow for a lingering ride with his always sympathetic characters. The book is “Bridge of Sighs.”
1. “The Second Life of Mirielle West” by Amanda Skenandore
2. “The Great Divide” by Cristina Henriquez
3. “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson
4. “The Three Miss Margarets” by Louise Shaffer
5. American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy” by Bob Welch
— Barb R., Morris
I think Barb will be fascinated with Kate Moore’s “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.