Alice Munro

With clarity and ease, Alice Munro renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives.

A collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and emotions in stories about a housekeeper entering old-maidhood whose life is transformed by a practical joke and a lifelong philanderer who finds the tables turned.

Some of these personal stories are imagined from Alice Munro's family history. Some are set in Scotland, where good liquor and amorous adventures temper the hard lives of legendary forbears in a place described by local records as having "no advantages." Others take place in the more familiar Munro territory around Lake Huron. All will amaze and delight listeners with their rich insights and astonishing epiphanies.

Interweaving stories tell of the evolving bond between practical, narrow-mainded Flo and her stepdaughter Rose, who manages to escape her small town life to achieve an equivocal success in the larger world.

Fifteen stories about life in rural Ontario deal with adolescence, loneliness, broken hearts, an abandoned wife, family relations, blind dates, and an aspiring writer.

In the powerful, haunting stories of Munro's new collection, men and women, in the midst of contemporary quandaries and crises, recall the long-buried yearnings, dreams, and hard choices that have given shape to their lives. [Friend of My Youth is] a wonderful collection of stories, beautifully written and deeply felt. It is difficult to do justice to Munro's magical way with characterization or to her unerring control of her own resources, she...

A portrayal of a young girl's youth in a Canadian town and her awakening to womanhood in the 1940s follows Del Jordan as she explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood and records the frustrations, joys, triumphs, and trials of small-town life.

Twenty-eight stories set in farms and small towns around Lake Huron. They include Dance of the Happy Shades, on a retired piano teacher, and Walker Brothers Cowboy, on two children making calls with their salesman father during the 1930s depression.

"In the thirteen stories in her second collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique that led no less a critic than John Updike to compare her to Chekhov. The sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts, grandmothers, and friends in these stories shimmer with hope and love, anger and reconciliation, as they contend with their histories and their present, and what they can see of the future."--BOOK...