If I had read this book all through my adolescence,
instead of The Bell Jar I would probably be a completely different person to
the one I am today. Sylvia Plath’s only novel is a work of poetic dark genius
and will always have a place on my shelf, but I’m glad that I now have Munro’s
novel as well, and hope that in time it will balance out my romantic melancholy
with something a little more positive.
Alice Munro is a master of the short story, and has won the
Nobel Prize for literature, the Man Booker and my undying devotion because I
think she is a bloody genius. Her writing brings dignity and beauty and meaning
to the lives of ordinary girls and women. Yet she has a sharp wit that is
unflinching in its exposure of those small tragedies’ that make up our lives.
She exposes the betrayals, the ridiculous and petty misunderstandings and
treats her characters with compassion and sensitivity.
In her only novel, Munro explores many of the same themes
she deals with in her short fiction. The refusal to be bound by conventional
definitions of womanhood, the rejection of small town life for bigger creative
possibilities, a narrator who keeps a cool ironic distance from the goings on
around her.
Often when recommending Alice Munro to people (as I
invariably do) they tell me they don’t like short stories because as soon as
they start getting into a story it ends, which I understand can be frustrating.
However, as this novel is a collection of interlinked stories that problem is
solved and you can just luxuriate in the witty, gorgeous prose of this terrific
writer.
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