Alice Munro poll

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no ILE thread,so it's about time to give some respect to the most deserved 2013 noble prize in Literature winner.

Poll Results

Option	Votes
Open Secrets – 1994 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)	2
Runaway – 2004 (winner of the 2004 Giller Prize) ISBN 1-4000-4281-X	1
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – 2001 (republished as Away From Her)	1
Friend of My Youth – 1990 (winner of the Trillium Book Award)	1
Too Much Happiness – 2009	0
The View from Castle Rock – 2006	0
The Love of a Good Woman – 1998 (winner of the 1998 Giller Prize)	0
Dance of the Happy Shades – 1968 (winner of the 1968 Governor General's Award for Fiction)	0
The Progress of Love – 1986 (winner of the 1986 Governor General's Award for Fiction)	0
The Moons of Jupiter – 1982 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)	0
Who Do You Think You Are? – 1978 (winner of the 1978 Governor General's Award for Fiction; also published as The Beggar	0
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You – 1974	0
Lives of Girls and Women – 1971	0
Dear Life – 2012	0

― nostormo, Saturday, 12 October 2013 21:30 (eleven years ago)

I wrote a blurb about her development. To me she didn't really get going until the nineties, during which she went from strength to strength and peaking on Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Her only bleh recent collection imo is The View from Castle Rock.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 13 October 2013 02:06 (eleven years ago)

I agree. From whar I read its her best book even rhough it has an awful title and won nothing (assuming Wikipedia is correct)

― nostormo, Sunday, 13 October 2013 05:16 (eleven years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

― System, Saturday, 19 October 2013 00:01 (eleven years ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

― System, Sunday, 20 October 2013 00:01 (eleven years ago)

I didn't vote here. It's jsut too hard to choose one collection of her work, to be honest. But it'd also be hard to pick just one story. I need to go back and read all of these. I just re-read "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" in the recent New Yorker, and it's a killer, as always. Couldn't watch the whole film version.

Her work in the 2000s and late 90s was very solid. Somehow seemed a bit broader in scope, dealing with the questions of age and experience rather than the battles of youth. Does that seem right? I'm not sure. That a writer can unsettle you and make you consider how others live, in a few pages, usually without grand drama, seems a miracle of a writer's skill.

― pauls00, Sunday, 20 October 2013 22:09 (eleven years ago)

that's about right!

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 20 October 2013 22:14 (eleven years ago)

well, it's probably just some ideas picked up from smarter sources (my comment, that is). I guess I only started to read her because she had a big rep in Canada. But there were these moments when I started reading her stuff....where I was thinking, yeah, here's a rural woman's coming-of-age story, hardships, blah, blah. A title like "Lives of Girls and Women" didn't do her any favours, maybe? And then she suddenly and subtly turned on the after-burners and took the reader (in this case, male & urban) somewhere entirely different. Not to compare the writers, exactly, but I had similar experiences reading "the French Lieutenant's Woman", "Middlemarch" and "The Leopard". Stories fixed in very particular places, times and characters, but somehow way beyond. What _is_ that that these kinds of books have? Just "good writing"? It's not there in every story.

― pauls00, Sunday, 20 October 2013 22:56 (eleven years ago)

You said it: rooting a story in a time and place without getting forensic.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 20 October 2013 22:57 (eleven years ago)

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