Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage [Paperback]

I don't often write reviews but I was very surprised to see that the only two reviewers of this collection thought it quite average. I guess that a lot of readers will be made to feel uncomfortable, as I was, by some of the subject matter. Long term illnesses are featured in several of the stories. I appreciated this. It's not an easy thing to write about, and Alice Munro does it extremely well without being sentimental. The final story was made into a film not long ago, starring Julie Christie. I had seen the film, and found it very moving. The story was probably better, I think. Many of the stories also feature women who are not entirely sympathetic, dissatisfied with their marriages or with their situations without very good reason. Several cheat or think about cheating on their partners. Again, I guess that a lot of readers don't like this, but I appreciated it. I enjoy reading about complex characters. My only, probably ridiculous complaint is that the stories are almost too well crafted to be lovable. They are, however, extremely admirable, and better than the vast majority of others I have read.

My introduction to Alice Munro was in reading The Love of a Good Woman: Stories, which I did around 10 years ago, and I was duly impressed. Shortly thereafter, I purchased this book, and for truly inexplicable reasons, I allowed it to gather dust on my bookshelf. The dust served as a rebuke to my housekeeping, and my judgment. Both have now finally been remedied. This book is an intense, enjoyable read, and I might even be a bit wiser, as I sort out how well this woman can observe the human condition.

As one might deduce from the subject line, Ms. Munro is Canadian, and one of their very best writers. Most of her works are short stories, and for that form, she must rank as one of the world's leading practitioners. Somewhere in high school, like others, I picked up the notion that a short story was a literary form of a "lesser god"; "real writers" wrote novels. Munro single-handedly can rectify the error in this so-called thinking.

This book is a collection of nine stories, and each one is so dense and rich that it conveys all the wonderful insights into human interactions that a full novel can. Munro has the skills of the best "mystery writer." She tosses out feints, utilizes twists and turns in the plot; she fakes and weaves, so that it would be a very rare reader indeed who could accurately predict where the story will end. And there is a wonderful eroticism imbedded in most of the stories. Not the sledgehammer version pioneered by Henry Miller, and emulated by many, but rather a far subtler one, with the focus on the tension involved in the first touching of another's flesh. With Ms. Munro just the grazing of finger-tips is far more erotic than Mr. Miller's use of flashlights. So, there is this delicious anticipation in her stories when males and females interact: will they be just "ships passing in the night," will it be a one night stand, or will that "stand" last 50 years? And in many of the stories one or more characters are involved in dealing with a particular medical condition, as our bodies wear out. There seems to always be a high level of dramatic tension that makes for a good "page turner." But if you turn too fast, "the bookmarks will measure what you lost" and Simon and Garfunkel once sung.

The sheer range of Munro's characters and their interactions is impressive. The book takes its title from the first story, in which one learns that the five words are part of a childhood game involving the matching of letters in the names of males and females. That story also involves the cruelty of teenagers in their coming of age, the miserly nature of a Scottish immigrant, the bleakness of Saskatchewan (will the last one out please turn off the lights!) and much else. "Floating Bridge" involves a woman with cancer, her husband, and a caregiver. "Comfort" concerns a teacher who dies from AIDS, and his struggles with the "creationists" at school. "Family furnishings" concerns a girl bypassing her older aunt who is a newspaper writer after she goes to university. "Nettles" involves flashbacks to youthful games (I had forgotten for many decades now how I used to make "mudballs" for war games) and the meeting of the boy and girl when they are adults, with families. "Post and Beam" concerns the visit of a cousin fleeing a bad family situation, seeking salvation via a more prosperous relative in the big city. "What is Remembered" is yet another truly marvelous story, and, inter alia, involves the memory of a one night stand that is milked for a lifetime of erotic pleasure. "Queenie" also involves the fleeing of a bad family situation in rural areas only to replicate equally dysfunctional relationships in the big city. And finally, "The Bear Comes Over the Mountain" involves a wife succumbing to Alzheimer's, and the reactions of the husband of 50 years as he is forgotten. Underscoring the density of these stories, the last one was made into a movie, but I was not able to find it at Amazon (almost certainly it has a different title). I'd welcome comments as to the name of the movie.

And as a sampling of the richness of her prose and insights, consider the following: "The unspeakable excitement you feel when a galloping disaster promises to release you from all responsibility for your own life." Or: "Fighting over whether their God was named Jehovah or Krishna...or whether it was okay to eat pork, getting down on their knees and howling out their prayers to some Old Codger in the sky who took a big interest in who won wars and football games." Or: "Lust that had given me shooting pains in the night was all chastened and trimmed back now into a tidy pilot flame, attentive, wifely." And most impressively: "The shame he felt then was the shame of being duped, or not having noticed the change that was going on. And not one woman had made him aware of it. There had been the change in the past when so many women so suddenly became available- or it seemed that way to him- and now this new change, when they were saying that what had happened was not what they had had in mind at all. They had collaborated because they were helpless and bewildered, and they had been injured by the whole thing, rather than delighted. Even when they had taken the initiative they had done so only because the cards were stacked against them."

And so back to where the story all began: A wonderful, marvelous, 6-star read.

(Note: Review first published at Amazon, USA, on September 01, 2010)

This collection of short stories was my introduction to Alice Munro's world and writing. It is not light reading material, not ideal if you seek some fluffy escapism, but each novella will stay long with you and make you think. Her short stories are like snapshots of the lives of her characters, this was something that I personally don't like: I prefer a story to have a beginning, a middle and an ending, it bothered me that I didn't get a glipmse of what would happen to the characters after the middle of the story, but it is just a personal preference.

I have read that Alice Munro is called the Canadian Chekhov, and I have to agree, the athmosphere of her stories is very reminiscent of Chekhov: her stories, the repressed tension, all the hidden feelings and reasons behind the peaceful exterior are simmering and make the reader tense up, feeling the progressive build up of tension and unavoidable explosion coming.

This was not a light and enjoyable read but rather an unsettling drama, the storylines and problems kept me thinking long after finishing the story.

Plot: 4/10
Characters: 8/10
Ending: 6/10
Writing: 7/10
Cover: 8/10