silverneurotic

With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

 

I read this collection of short stories as I had never read Alice Munro before. I had high expectations as her name comes up frequently but honestly, I was not overly fond of this collection. I'm not sure what was the issue, aside from personally not enjoying stories having to do with infidelity (in which there were quite a few) or just not connecting to any of the characters or situations. For the most part, the stories were memorable as I can still remember a few of the stories almost two months, and several books later and maybe this was not a good place to begin with Alice Munro. Whatever it is though, I probably won't be reading more of her work anytime soon.