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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