For many, Alice Munro is a favorite author. Her death last month may cause my review to sting. Let me first say, I recognize her talent. Her rural Canadian backdrops intrigue me, and her unadorned style suits their everydayness. I admire her terrific story ideas and jealously wish they were my own.
It may be that a physical book would have been superior to my audiobook, narrated by Kimberly Farr and Arthur Murray. Their methods were as spare as Munro's writing. I want the fault for not loving these stories to be my own—something as simple to blame as the chosen format.
For me, her characters did not come to life. Nor did I empathize with their dilemmas. Setting, if described more vividly, could have been keenly interesting, and perhaps, beautiful or heartbreaking. I found at the end of the collection, the stories I read earliest hadn't stuck with me. Did I read them in too rapid succession? I don't think so. I struggled to finish this book and considered DNFing it throughout. It was simply discipline that got me to the end.
I don’t have a favorite story from this collection, but several were more engaging.
"Gravel" is a reflection on a childhood tragedy involving the narrator's older sister. It is poignant. Was I saddened by it? Not really.
"Leaving Maverly" is a meandering story about a young girl, Leah, who endures a repressed and religious childhood. Later, she works alongside a security guard at a cinema, where their lives twist around one another. It is a strange and believable tale. The characters were neither likeable nor unlikable; nor did they spark curiosity.
"Dolly," the story of a door-to-door saleswoman selling beauty products, elicited a smile because it had a stronger narrative voice. Dolly stops by a house and befriends the women inside (the narrator).
One day, I may reread "The Eye," about a 5-year-old's realization of how she exists separate from her mother. There is something philosophical in this one.
"Night," is the autobiographical story of a ‘tween suffering from insomnia after her appendectomy. Will it stay with me? Doubtful. But it did interest me.
In "Pride," a girl is sent to live with her ultra-religious aunt and uncle while her parents are in Africa. The tension seared a scene and feeling into my memory, but I can't remember how it ends, why its titled Pride, or what its point is.
"Voices," about GIs and war-time prostitutes, felt like a snapshot. It offers a little more description though. I can see the prostitute's garments and smell their cloying perfume. But the characters were as flat as art deco line drawings.
As for the title story, "Dear Life," it too felt aimless. There were issues not discussed that were far more important than the ones contained in the story. Its ending is fine. It lands. But it is far from punchy or clever.
There are half-a-dozen others. Honestly, I'm not interested in trying to remember them. As an example down below, I will mention one more, "Amundsen," later.
I wrote these thoughts within a few days of finishing the book. But I wasn’t ready to share them—unsure of my initial reaction. I wanted to sit with my thoughts for a week. Its been almost a month. During that time, I’ve watched interviews of Munro both as a younger writer and after she won the Nobel Prize. I like her. I appreciate the way she talks about her writing, process, and her place in history. Not loving her stories has disappointed me. On Substack, I’ve read the outpouring of Alice Munro tributes and admiration. I can see and respect the points her fans cite for loving her work.
While the month has allowed me to study and appreciate Munro and her writing, it hasn’t made me like her stories more. A handful of her ideas and characters have endured in my memory like that scene in “Pride” I mentioned above. There is a hollowness to the humanity she portrays which I do find oddly interesting. I think about Milton Avery’s portraits. You know they are everyday humans like yourself, but you don’t quite feel them. I balk at something I have read repeatedly in her in praises: that her characters are “universal.” I don’t find them so. I adore her single-word titles that give nothing away and yet do say something about the story. I agree with
’s quote below:"But more often, her stories simply drop in on a character and observe with penetrating emotional truth."
I like the sense, that like one of Scrooge’s ghosts, I have dropped into another dimension and am observing how a specific life in a specific place is unfolding. The “penetrating emotional truth” gives me pause because I often found the penetration wasn’t very deep; the truth not very telling.
adds,"In a typical Alice Munro story, lightly plotted and deeply described, readers also find out what we can see in commonplace characters and everyday events. We may begin to form expectations about where a character or story is going, but then it does not go there."
Most skilled writers successfully upend their readers’ expectations -- many, in much more dramatic ways. I don’t find Munro’s stories to be “deeply described.” There are enough words to enable her reader to visualize the characters, have a basic feel for setting, and understand the dynamic of the story. But there is nothing that connects the reader to any of it.
Without truly knowing the characters, you can’t sympathize or empathize with them. To wit: “Amundsen.” In it, Vivian Hyde arrives in Amundsen to teach at a tuberculosis sanitarium. She befriends a girl named Mary and carries on with Dr. Fox, the head administrator. I enjoyed peering into their world, as if through a telescope, but when the story ended I didn’t care about Vivian, Dr. Fox, Mary, nor any of the sick and dying kids at the sanitorium. It was a cold peek into another world.
I'm sorry Ms. Munro. I respect your talents as a storyteller and especially as an editor. I love seeing Canada through your stories. But I prefer writing that packs a richer emotional punch and offers more vivid description. I don't need Kristin Hannah or Maggie O’Farrell, but something more than what you have offered us.
I give Dear Life 3-stars ("liked it.") I know many readers who LOVE her work. Don’t take my word on this one. Give her a try and let me know what you think.
As someone who was born and raised within an hour of Alice Munro's home for most of her life, from which she did most of her writing, namely a modest bungalow in Clinton, ON, I've always wondered what people elsewhere make of her writing. To me, she's always seemed a very local writer. I've long felt that she captured the stolidness and secret strangeness in the settler people here. Lives of Girls and Women is in my opinion her masterpiece. Interestingly, Margaret Atwood argues that it's actually a novel rather than a collection of short stories, reasoning that there's more to connect them than just their shared setting in the fictional county of Jubilee, which is based on the real-life Huron County, of which Clinton is one of the more substantial towns. Maybe that's why it's my favourite of her books.