Alice Munro

 

I am sick today - and all I want to do is read every Alice Munro story I can find in every short story collection I have on my shelves.  "Passion", "Dimensions", "The Office", "Carried Away"...  I am wholly moved in a way that no other author has reached me.  She has kept me company today, moving me away from my own discomfort into a place of compassion for others.  Problems are not neatly tied up with a perfect solution - the endings are necessarily happy, but they are real. 

I needed to convince myself of her future importance to me as a reader, a writer, a woman by reading all the outlying stories before reading a whole collection.  I am convinced beyond measure.  I am stunned by her discernment, her writing craft, and her understanding of the human story.

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