What's so great about Alice Munro?

the ones with faces seem out of place.

idk i think theyre waaaay nice than stock photos are mb i just like the stock photo aesthetic

the girl in "there's something..." is mesmerizing to me

The new collection is her best since Hateship...

there's only been one other btw them (?) which is my absolute favorite of hers. although there's something i've been menaing to tell you has the story about the dude that tries to walk on water.

Yeah, they're lovely. I thought they were Hoppers for a minute

I believe they're not stock, but were taken especially for the books.

Alice Munro is like the female northern version of William Faulkner.

o_0

there's only been one other btw them (?)

Runaway
The View From Castle Rock

Oh they're def not stock

woo a copy of 'hateship, friendship' showed up at work today, i can read this person now

you will love it (maybe)

hateship is a good place to start, it's pretty much amazing

Yup.

i really like those penguin classics covers, why do they not have them over here

picked up 'open secrets' & 'the love of a good woman', half way thru the latter now. kinda wonder what im going to do when i run out of her books, i always love knowing that theres more of them to read

I know! I've only got Castle Rock left unread, and I'm trying to hold off on that until she gets a new one out, so that I won't be without something to live for.

i just looked on wikipedia + ive got 6 more to go which is a relief

hahaha this was exactly my thinking, but then i got greedy and read the last 3 in recent months ;_;

haha i think in a two month period last summer i read eight of her books i think they sustained me

some of her stories so many of them really are like a long swim in the ocean you come out of them feeling refreshed & born anew

yes.

luckily for me, although i read super fast, i retain close to 0%, so i'm looking forward to rereading her entire back catalogue.

when i read 'runaway' it was summer and i was staying in a cabin on a farm in oregon and the landscape suited the stories really well.

estela do you think a lot of settings/characters have a distinctly new-zealandy feel to them?

*a lot of HER

yes i do, sometimes anyway. not so much with stories set in the past; i think there are religious differences between canadian olden days people and nz olden days people, which has a strong bearing on the characters. her writing is not like new zealand writing though, her extreme talent aside, her work can be dark and menacing but she's not gloomy in the way of nz writing.

just reading 'open secrets' for the first time + man... carried away - thats a story right there

is that the one with "The Albanian Virgin"? Good stuff.

yes it is!

Get your hands on this immediately. It's cheap too!

i would but i've already got most of her other stuff :)

carried away is absolutely devastating. it was the first story i ever read of hers and, as much as i love her, i don't think i've read anything that has topped it.

i know right! i would agree w/ you that its definitely right near the top, amazes me how much she crams into that story

Having read everything else by her, I'm still holding off on Castle Rock. I fear she will die and I'll have nothing left to read of hers.

Reread "Carried Away," inspired by this thread. I didn't sort out the relationships, but I retained the memory of the letters Louisa received, and how the quiet authority of the last paragraph carries as much emotional weight as the conclusion to any novel.

A few of my favorite Munro stories:

Floating Bridge
Miles City, Montana
The Albanian Virgin
Save the Reaper
Turkey Season
Dimenions

'miles city, montana' is so so good. so is 'carried away'.

i think my favorite story of hers is 'nettles' from i think 'hateship...' which is just so perfect and real i can mistake it for my own memories

She had a new one in last week's New Yorker--haven't read it.

It's called "Gravel" and it's average.

Average for Munro (ie, still ace), or average for the rest of us (ie, just average)?

I thought it was better than basically every fiction story they published this year, but I'm a sucker for her stuff. Just bought the selected short stories.

I would never associate Alice Munro with romance or romanticism, but sometimes she so perfectly describes longing:

From carried away: He could no more describe the feeling he got from her than you can describe a smell. It’s like the scorch of electricity. It’s like burnt kernels of wheat. No, it’s like a bitter orange. I give up.

From comfort: Her memory of Ed Shore’s kiss outside the kitchen door did, however, become a treasure. When Ed sang the tenor solos in the Choral Society’s performance of the Messiah every Christmas, that moment would return to her. “Comfort Ye My People” pierced her throat with starry needles. As if everything about her was recognized then, and honored and set alight.

<3

She's got a story in the new Granta.

http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/a-beginners-guide-to-alice-munro.html#comments

ignore that. there are abt a million other websites that will give you a better intro

This woman should have won three Nobles by now.

Read Dolnick's essay about Munro that he published as a short ebook--it's OK, but mainly seems to consist of arguments about why short stories aren't as dumb as you think, which for someone like me who doesn't even think that made the whole enterprise a bit of a waste of time

r.i.p. lit crit

happy birthday, cutey.

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/431093_10150638970355665_1200768662_n.jpg

Thanks for that pic, Scott--I was reading 'The View from castle Rock' over the weekend, and with its overt autobiographical stuff I was wondering what she looked like when young

It's the only one of hers I hadn't read yet--with her being quite old I 'd been holding off in case she died and there was nothing else new by her to read, but now I see there's a new book scheduled for later this year, so I can relax a bit

this is fun!

http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/a-beginners-guide-to-alice-munro.html

"or am i just mistaken about her popularity?"

this

maybe i need a more literary friend group

she definitely has fans in the u.s. (among literary types who have been reading her in the new yorker for years and her trade paperbacks are fairly ubiquitous and she always gets gushing reviews in newspapers so anyone who buys lit books based on those reviews has to know about her) and canada, but i don't know about elsewhere. my opinion is skewed though cuz i have lived in philly, marthas vineyard, and western mass for decades now and those places are filled with brainiacs who read a ton. but her rave newspaper reviews are nation-wide. i would say "college-educated New Yorker Magazine reader" would seem to be her target audience here BUT i think there is also book club crossover with her and i kinda can't believe Oprah never raved about her but maybe she did and i missed it.

also, yeah, short story collections one notch above new volumes of poetry as far as sales go probably. with some exceptions.

she is listed on oprah mag's fave women writers list:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Favorite-Women-Writers/3

and she gets reviewed by francine prose in O mag:

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Too-Much-Happiness-by-Alice-Munro-Book-Review

she is way too subtle for an oprah bookclub choice

As much as anything, I became more aware of her as each Best American Short Stories annual, from the late 80s through the 90s, featured one and sometimes two of her stories, without a break in the run.

Would it shock y'all to know that Bret Easton Ellis thinks she's overrated?

http://i39.tinypic.com/ff48q0.png

http://stcommunities.straitstimes.com/show/2013/10/18/ill-health-keeps-canadian-author-alice-munro-nobel-ceremony

"Short story writer Munro, 82, revealed in 2009 that she had undergone coronary bypass surgery and had had cancer treatment."

http://25.media.tumblr.com/aa3ee53eb18c9323f19043a1b81aab70/tumblr_mutvbot7CZ1qb4dbmo1_500.jpg

some of her stories so many of them really are like a long swim in the ocean you come out of them feeling refreshed & born anew

― polymath & psychics club (Lamp),

otm. I had a similar response reading the late story "Fiction" in one sitting this morning. Wow. She has a talent for drawing circles around circles, and when I'm afraid she's spinning away from the center she pulls the circles together and tight.

yeah maybe it was on this board where someone described her stories as kind of starting in the middle and then expanding outward like tree rings

the retail person in me wants to know more about alice in her bookstore days.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXU1priUUAA3wHj?format=jpg

my eyes are terrible. i see james joyce.

https://shortstorymagictricks.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/munro-alice-1965.jpg

i like the peek at her shelf. i feel like i'm spying.

i didn't even see that she had died! well, i'll be reading her for as long as i live. don't know if there is more that i can say. i used to say she was my favorite living writer. now i don't know what to say! she lived long. she wrote good.

Just reread “Family Furnishings”. Not much happens. Everything happens. A genius.