Let's Enjoy Discussing Short Stories by Alice Munro

Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and winner of many book awards, passed away on May 13, aged 92. Let's honor her life by reading her book of 10 short stories titled "Friend Of My Youth."

In her recent interview of Monro for The New Yorker, Deborah Treisman has this to say about Monro's writings and life:

'It’s a tautology to say that the author of story collections with such titles as “Lives of Girls and Women” and “The Love of a Good Woman” wrote about women; in fact, what Munro did was not so much write about women as write from inside them. When her characters don’t understand exactly what they’re feeling, she expresses it in such a way that you can both feel the confusion yourself and see beneath it to its cause. Reading her stories, you merge with her characters and also with yourself. You learn about Munro, too, of course. “I have used bits and pieces of my own life always,” she once told me. And now I can see in my mind’s eye the landscape of rural southwestern Ontario, where Munro grew up, her father’s fox farm, her mother debilitated by early-onset Parkinson’s, the slabs of limestone above the Canadian Shield, the movie theatres, the churches, the train stations. The details in her stories are vividly specific, and yet the emotional and psychological plots could unfold anywhere. You sink into her narratives with a feeling of both strangeness and recognition.'
Protected content title picture from Amazon.com)