I came across my first Munro story too early in my reading life and didn’t get it. The ending felt abrupt. What happened to the characters? In the decades since, having read almost everything she’s written, I still sometimes don’t “get” it. But I’ve come to realize that’s more of a feature than a bug. And I love her stories more than any others I’ve read. She died this week at the age of 92.
She was the master of the seemingly mundane: all outward domesticity, all inward startling & abrasive drama. Moreover, she’s simply a master. If you’ve not yet read her (or if you have!), here is a list of my favorite story collections:
Runaway (the three linked Penelope stories are, to quote Munro herself “a great crippling whack to the chest”—in the best way)
Open Secrets (I spent my entire thesis semester re-reading nothing but “A Real Life” in hopes of absorbing something essential)
Too Much Happiness (“Wenlock Edge”!!!!)
Dance of the Happy Shades (This is her first book and it is a geyser of pure literary genius)
The Beggar Maid (Everyone says Munro never wrote a novel. But she did. And it’s The Beggar Maid)
I once read a story about the author Emily Ruskovich making a broom and driving it to Munro’s house in rural Ontario. This is what Munro devotees do. They re-read and try to emulate her. They make and deliver homemade brooms (or stew in jealousy that they didn’t think such a thing first).
Alice Munro never fails to thrill me. I’m glad she was in this world.
Cheers,
Lacy
P.S. I’m constantly reading that Lives of Girls and Women is the closest thing she wrote to a novel, but The Beggar Maid hangs together so much more clearly to me. And is a superior book on the whole.
P.P.S. I’ve been poring over the thorough and eloquent Munro pieces circulating the web and intend to pick a few of her stories to read aloud to my teenagers next week when school lets out. (The selection of these stories will likely be the most delicious task I’ll have set myself all year.)