- Hardcover: 339 pages
- Publisher: Alfred A Knopf; 1st Edition edition (Nov 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0375403957
- ISBN-13: 978-0375403958
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 15 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,643,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
Superb...Long ago, Virginia Woolf described George Eliot as one of the few writers 'for grown-up people.' The same might today, and with equal justice, be said of Alice Munro.--Michael Gorra, "New York Times Book Review"
A writer for the ages--Dan Cryer, "Newsday"
Alice Munro is indisputably a master. Like all great writers, she helps sharpen perception...Her imagination is fearless...A better book of stories can scarcely be imagined.--Greg Varner, "Washington Post Book World"
A riveting collection...a lovely book. Munro's stories move through the years with a sneaky grace.--Georgia Jones-Davis, "San Francisco Chronicle"
A triumph...certain to seal her reputation as our contemporary Chekhov--Carol Shields, "Mirabella"
Superlative...She distills a novel's worth of dramatic events into a story of 20 pages.--Erik Huber, "Time OutM"
These astonishing stories remind us, yet again, of the literary miracles Alice Munro continues to perform.--Francine Prose, "Elle"
A writer for the ages--Dan Cryer, "Newsday"
Alice Munro is indisputably a master. Like all great writers, she helps sharpen perception...Her imagination is fearless...A better book of stories can scarcely be imagined.--Greg Varner, "Washington Post Book World"
A riveting collection...a lovely book. Munro's stories move through the years with a sneaky grace.--Georgia Jones-Davis, "San Francisco Chronicle"
A triumph...certain to seal her reputation as our contemporary Chekhov--Carol Shields, "Mirabella"
Superlative...She distills a novel's worth of dramatic events into a story of 20 pages.--Erik Huber, "Time OutM"
These astonishing stories remind us, yet again, of the literary miracles Alice Munro continues to perform.--Francine Prose, "Elle"
"From the Hardcover edition." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes--the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart.
Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met--the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her--she must count on herself.
Some choices are made--in a will, in a decision to leave home--with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences. The rich layering that gives Alice Munro's work so strong a sense of life is particularly apparent in the title story, in which the death of a local optometrist brings an entire town into focus--from the preadolescent boys who find his body, to the man who probably killed him, to the woman who must decide what to do about what she might know. Large, moving, profound--these are stories that extend the limits of fiction.
Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met--the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her--she must count on herself.
Some choices are made--in a will, in a decision to leave home--with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences. The rich layering that gives Alice Munro's work so strong a sense of life is particularly apparent in the title story, in which the death of a local optometrist brings an entire town into focus--from the preadolescent boys who find his body, to the man who probably killed him, to the woman who must decide what to do about what she might know. Large, moving, profound--these are stories that extend the limits of fiction.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sorry, but I completely disagree with the previous reviewer. This was the best book I have read this year. If you like slice-of-life writing, if you are looking for a book that makes you think 'yes, I have felt exactly like that', if you are a fan of Raymond Carver, do read The Love of a Good Woman. It is wonderful.
Format:Paperback
Alice Munro is (and I think there's a consensus on this) the greatest living writer in English. Though there are hits and misses among her stories, there is a huge majority of direct hits.
It would be wrong to say that she has become darker. She always believed in a good look at the worst. But she has certainly, in her later work, taken literary subtle difficult fiction into the terrain of the thriller and even horror writer. It's a combination few others have tried.
The Love of a Good Woman, for all its beauty, is one of the most horrid and frightening stories I have ever read - as confirmed on a recent admiring unwilling re-reading - what on earth is going to happen after the end of that story?
The same can be said of Save the Reaper with its hints of wild depravity.
Jakarta and The Children Stay show the long after-effects of the freedoms of the 60s and 70s on the survivors of those decades in a way that is both forgiving and unforgiving. No-one like Munro describes how long and strange life is so poetically, uncomfortably, believably.
It would be wrong to say that she has become darker. She always believed in a good look at the worst. But she has certainly, in her later work, taken literary subtle difficult fiction into the terrain of the thriller and even horror writer. It's a combination few others have tried.
The Love of a Good Woman, for all its beauty, is one of the most horrid and frightening stories I have ever read - as confirmed on a recent admiring unwilling re-reading - what on earth is going to happen after the end of that story?
The same can be said of Save the Reaper with its hints of wild depravity.
Jakarta and The Children Stay show the long after-effects of the freedoms of the 60s and 70s on the survivors of those decades in a way that is both forgiving and unforgiving. No-one like Munro describes how long and strange life is so poetically, uncomfortably, believably.
4 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this because it was widely praised in the literary reviews. My memory is that one short review called it "one of the best collection of short stories in recent years". However, it passed me by. I found the stories dull and uninteresting. After each one I thought, "so what - is that it"? They were good at putting me to sleep though. Only the final one (about a crying baby, recalled from the baby's point of view) came anywhere close to holding my interest. I think part of the problem is that I like my short stories to have a good ending; to have a twist in the tale. These don't.
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