This expansive use of time is one of the reasons the story “Family Furnishings” is so satisfying. Munro often flouts the so-called rules in her affinity for zooming right past the moment when we imagine her stories are about to end, pulling us far into the future of her characters’ lives. By the end, we’re left wondering whether the title refers to Carla running away from home at 18 to marry Clark, or running away from that marriage, or running back to it - or all three. The story centers on one fateful afternoon when Sylvia helps Carla plot a secret escape from her husband.Īmong the thrills of this story (and others) is Munro’s disdain for literary “rules”: Her shifts in point of view, for example, keep readers on their toes as insights gradually emerge about Carla’s marriage to Clark, a man “who had fights not just with the people he owed money to.” Carla’s motivations and desires shift from scene to scene - just as they do in real life - and we are never quite sure just how dangerous her husband might actually be. It concerns the relationship between a young woman, Carla, and Sylvia Jamieson, a recently widowed botany professor. This motif is nowhere more beautifully explored than in “Runaway,” not only one of Munro’s best stories but one of the greatest stories of our new century. The secret wish to escape one life to begin another is a preoccupation running through much of Munro’s work, and it turns up again in these selected stories. The most recent award was a victory not only for Munro and her admirers but also for the often-overlooked genre of which she is a grand master: the short story. And, for nearly all of Munro’s characters, the possibilities of a different life beckon just outside their grasp.įor creating these characters, Munro has received numerous awards, including the Man Booker Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award - and, in 2013, the Nobel Prize for literature. They get married and have children, friendships and affairs. Munro’s women grow up and leave home - or they never have the opportunity to leave.
Starting with her 1968 collection “Dance of the Happy Shades,” Munro has given us 139 stories and one novel, “Lives of Girls and Women,” which she describes as “really just a collection of linked stories.” Much of her work involves intimate portraits of women in rural Canada. It is particularly illuminating to read the stories in the context of an insightful introduction by Jane Smiley, who asserts that she “cannot read any Alice Munro story without believing every word” - which is exactly how I have felt about Munro’s work over the years.
This is a doorstop of a book, at more than 600 pages, and there is something deeply satisfying about finishing one story and knowing that there are many more to savor.
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