Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage, stories
by Munro, Alice
pub. by Alfred K. Knopf, ( a Borzoi Book), NY, 2001 -       isbn; 0-375-41300-6     9 stories, 326 p - text of stories in 323 p.
Alice Munro is a Canadian fiction writer who exclusively writes short stories. She is highly celebrated, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. She lives in, and sets her stories in, western Canada from Vancouver and Victoria to Toronto. This book is one of her later collections. She has at least 10 previous published collections of short stories.
Of the 9 short stories 8 of them are told from a womans point of view. The last The Bear came over the mountain is written from a mans view. It is also a haunting tale of the onset of alzheimers disease.
Most of the stories are more like short novels in that they span long periods of time, sometimes tens of years with parts threaded together. All are very realistic portrayals of everyday life and interior thoughts of those included. Nothing fancy here, just life as it is lived, as people live together and apart and deal with one another. The stories often describe the innermost thoughts of their characters, revealing their humanity, for good or for ill. Many of the stories have a bit of a twist at the end, not as sharp as those of the author OHenry, but a twist nonetheless.
This book was a slow read for me. Perhaps because it explores the female psyche - a place which mystifies most of us males.
~2013-11-15~

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