rcsreads's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
2013 was clearly a bad year for literature if this was the only thing worth giving the Nobel Prize to!
.
The last four stories, including the titular Dear Life, are semi-autobiographical and I really enjoyed them. I'd have liked a whole book of the same snapshots of one life. The rest of the book is just people in small towns, where all the men are dicks, having affairs. I was so bored of it by the end.
.
The last four stories, including the titular Dear Life, are semi-autobiographical and I really enjoyed them. I'd have liked a whole book of the same snapshots of one life. The rest of the book is just people in small towns, where all the men are dicks, having affairs. I was so bored of it by the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Terminal illness
Minor: War
yearofbluewater's review against another edition
I'm not rating this book, because it's kind of weird. In terms of quality, it probably deserves five stars, or at least four. Alice Munro is obviously an incredibly talented writer, judging both from what I've read and the fact that she's won roughly a million awards. But though I liked Dear Life, it didn't make the kind of impression on me that I think it's meant to, and that's through no fault of Alice Munro's; it's just that I'm a teenager, and this is a book written for adults. So I'm not giving it a rating because I don't feel qualified to. That's all I really have to say about it. I enjoyed reading it, even though everyone kept cheating on each other or dying or both and that made me sad
erinbro1's review against another edition
5.0
I had never before read Alice Munro and boy was I missing out. Her kind of writing is my absolute favorite: quiet, un-showy, simple. Being unfamiliar with Munro, I wasn't even sure exactly how many books she'd written and now that I see how prolific she was over her long career, I'm thrilled to know I have a lot of Munro to get through now.
apetruce's review against another edition
3.0
Munro has won hosts of awards and is lauded of late as one of the best fiction writers of our time. I think she's good but not profound. Her short stories are thought-provoking and dredge up little corners of existence and puts words on them. I like that. I like that she writes about many strictly female emotions and events in an unapologetic way. But her work is not the type I would seek out for either escape or comfort. I think of her stories as something to do on a airplane or while waiting at the hairdressers.
lexaabdalla's review against another edition
3.0
https://fictionalexa.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/a-venture-into-munros-short-stories/
vhop's review against another edition
4.0
The last few stories were the most interesting - the autobiographical ones. And they were actually the ones I was able to identify with. Kind of scary: does it mean I'm getting old?
imosan_nao's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
lucymccarthy's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
nickfourtimes's review against another edition
5.0
1) "Once in a while I skipped lunch, even though it was part of my salary. I went in to Amundsen, where I ate in a coffee shop. The coffee was Postum and the best bet for a sandwich was tinned salmon, if they had any. The chicken salad had to be looked over well for bits of skin and gristle. Nevertheless I felt more at ease there, as if nobody would know who I was.
About that I was probably mistaken.
The coffee shop didn't have a ladies' room, so you had to go next door to the hotel, then past the open door of the beer parlour, always dark and noisy and letting out a smell of beer and whisky, a blast of cigarette and cigar smoke fit to knock you down. Nevertheless I felt easy enough there. The loggers, the men from the sawmill, would never yelp at you the way the soldiers and the airmen in Toronto did. They were deep down in a world of men, bawling out their own stories, not here to look for women. Possibly more eager in fact to get away from that company now or forever."
-Amundsen
2) "And that was what had happened. Isabel had failed to wake up that morning and had been moved to another floor, where it seemed they stashed the people who had no chance of improving—even less chance than those in the previous room—but were refusing to die.
'You might as well go home,' they told him. They said that they would get in touch if there was any change.
That made sense. For one thing, he had used up all his time in the relatives' housing. And he had more than used up his time away from the police force in Maverley. All signs said that the right thing to do was to go back there.
Instead, he stayed in the city. He got a job with the hospital maintenance crew, cleaning and clearing and mopping. He found a furnished apartment, with just essentials in it, not far away."
-Leaving Maverley
3) "Jackson himself was the son of a plumber. He had never been in a stable in his life or herded cows or stooked grain. Or found himself as now stumping along a railway track that seemed to have reverted from its normal purpose of carrying people and freight to become a province of wild apple trees and thorny berry bushes and trailing grapevines and crows—he knew that bird at least—scolding from perches you could not see. And right now a garter snake slithering between the rails, perfectly confident he won't be quick enough to tramp on and murder it. He does know enough to figure that it's harmless, but the confidence riles him."
-Train
4) "He said that he had been called away, without indicating why or where to. He emptied his bank account and packed the few things belonging to him. In the evening, late in the evening, he got on the train.
He slept off and on during the night and in one of those snatches he saw the little Mennonite boys go by in their cart. He heard their small voices singing.
In the morning he got off in Kapuskasing. He could smell the mills, and was encouraged by the cooler air. Work there, sure to be work in a lumbering town."
-Train
5) "Where the shops finally did peter out there were some cabins. Empty, boards nailed across their windows, waiting to be demolished. Where people used to stay on humbler holidays, before the motels. And then I remembered that I too had stayed there. Yes, in one of those places when they were reduced—maybe it was the off-season—reduced to taking in afternoon sinners and I had been one of them. I was still a student teacher and I would not even have remembered that it was in this town if it wasn't for something about those now boarded-up cabins. The man a teacher, older. A wife at home, undoubtedly children. Lives to be tampered with. She mustn't know, it would break her heart. I didn't care in the least. Let it break."
-Dolly
6) "I lived when I was young at the end of a long road, or a road that seemed long to me. Back behind me, as I walked home from primary school, and then from high school, was the real town with its activity and its sidewalks and its streetlights for after dark. Marking the end of town were two bridges over the Maitland River: one narrow iron bridge, where cars sometimes got into trouble over which one should pull off and wait for the other, and a wooden walkway which occasionally had a plank missing, so that you could look right down into the bright, hurrying water. I liked that, but somebody always came and replaced the plank eventually.
Then there was a slight hollow, a couple of rickety houses that got flooded every spring, but that people—different people—always came and lived in anyway. And then another bridge, over the mill race, which was narrow but deep enough to drown you. After that, the road divided, one part of it going south up a hill and over the river again to become a genuine highway, and the other jogging around the old fairgrounds to turn west.
That westward road was mine.
[...]
Our house would not have been one of the very first houses in that early settlement, because it was covered with brick, and they were all just wood, but it had probably gone up not long afterwards. It turned its back on the village; it faced west across slightly downsloping fields to the hidden curve where the river made what was called the Big Bend. Beyond the river was a patch of dark evergreen trees, probably cedar but too far away to tell. And even farther away, on another hillside, was another house, quite small at that distance, facing ours, that we would never visit or know and that was to me like a dwarf's house in a story. But we knew the name of the man who lived there, or had lived there at one time, for he might have died by now. Roly Grain, his name was, and he does not have any further part in what I'm writing now, in spite of his troll's name, because this is not a story, only life."
-Dear Life
7) "I did not go home for my mother's last illness or for her funeral. I had two small children and nobody in Vancouver to leave them with. We could barely have afforded the trip, and my husband had a contempt for formal behaviour, but why blame it on him? I felt the same. We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do—we do it all the time."
-Dear Life
About that I was probably mistaken.
The coffee shop didn't have a ladies' room, so you had to go next door to the hotel, then past the open door of the beer parlour, always dark and noisy and letting out a smell of beer and whisky, a blast of cigarette and cigar smoke fit to knock you down. Nevertheless I felt easy enough there. The loggers, the men from the sawmill, would never yelp at you the way the soldiers and the airmen in Toronto did. They were deep down in a world of men, bawling out their own stories, not here to look for women. Possibly more eager in fact to get away from that company now or forever."
-Amundsen
2) "And that was what had happened. Isabel had failed to wake up that morning and had been moved to another floor, where it seemed they stashed the people who had no chance of improving—even less chance than those in the previous room—but were refusing to die.
'You might as well go home,' they told him. They said that they would get in touch if there was any change.
That made sense. For one thing, he had used up all his time in the relatives' housing. And he had more than used up his time away from the police force in Maverley. All signs said that the right thing to do was to go back there.
Instead, he stayed in the city. He got a job with the hospital maintenance crew, cleaning and clearing and mopping. He found a furnished apartment, with just essentials in it, not far away."
-Leaving Maverley
3) "Jackson himself was the son of a plumber. He had never been in a stable in his life or herded cows or stooked grain. Or found himself as now stumping along a railway track that seemed to have reverted from its normal purpose of carrying people and freight to become a province of wild apple trees and thorny berry bushes and trailing grapevines and crows—he knew that bird at least—scolding from perches you could not see. And right now a garter snake slithering between the rails, perfectly confident he won't be quick enough to tramp on and murder it. He does know enough to figure that it's harmless, but the confidence riles him."
-Train
4) "He said that he had been called away, without indicating why or where to. He emptied his bank account and packed the few things belonging to him. In the evening, late in the evening, he got on the train.
He slept off and on during the night and in one of those snatches he saw the little Mennonite boys go by in their cart. He heard their small voices singing.
In the morning he got off in Kapuskasing. He could smell the mills, and was encouraged by the cooler air. Work there, sure to be work in a lumbering town."
-Train
5) "Where the shops finally did peter out there were some cabins. Empty, boards nailed across their windows, waiting to be demolished. Where people used to stay on humbler holidays, before the motels. And then I remembered that I too had stayed there. Yes, in one of those places when they were reduced—maybe it was the off-season—reduced to taking in afternoon sinners and I had been one of them. I was still a student teacher and I would not even have remembered that it was in this town if it wasn't for something about those now boarded-up cabins. The man a teacher, older. A wife at home, undoubtedly children. Lives to be tampered with. She mustn't know, it would break her heart. I didn't care in the least. Let it break."
-Dolly
6) "I lived when I was young at the end of a long road, or a road that seemed long to me. Back behind me, as I walked home from primary school, and then from high school, was the real town with its activity and its sidewalks and its streetlights for after dark. Marking the end of town were two bridges over the Maitland River: one narrow iron bridge, where cars sometimes got into trouble over which one should pull off and wait for the other, and a wooden walkway which occasionally had a plank missing, so that you could look right down into the bright, hurrying water. I liked that, but somebody always came and replaced the plank eventually.
Then there was a slight hollow, a couple of rickety houses that got flooded every spring, but that people—different people—always came and lived in anyway. And then another bridge, over the mill race, which was narrow but deep enough to drown you. After that, the road divided, one part of it going south up a hill and over the river again to become a genuine highway, and the other jogging around the old fairgrounds to turn west.
That westward road was mine.
[...]
Our house would not have been one of the very first houses in that early settlement, because it was covered with brick, and they were all just wood, but it had probably gone up not long afterwards. It turned its back on the village; it faced west across slightly downsloping fields to the hidden curve where the river made what was called the Big Bend. Beyond the river was a patch of dark evergreen trees, probably cedar but too far away to tell. And even farther away, on another hillside, was another house, quite small at that distance, facing ours, that we would never visit or know and that was to me like a dwarf's house in a story. But we knew the name of the man who lived there, or had lived there at one time, for he might have died by now. Roly Grain, his name was, and he does not have any further part in what I'm writing now, in spite of his troll's name, because this is not a story, only life."
-Dear Life
7) "I did not go home for my mother's last illness or for her funeral. I had two small children and nobody in Vancouver to leave them with. We could barely have afforded the trip, and my husband had a contempt for formal behaviour, but why blame it on him? I felt the same. We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do—we do it all the time."
-Dear Life
anetq's review against another edition
4.0
Munro is a member of some exclusive clubs: short story authors, who get's taken seriously and female Nobel Prize winners. And I can see why. "Dear Life" consists of 14 short stories and 4 autobiographical memory pieces. The novels describe 14 different little universes a moment before they get tilted off their axis and everything changes. It made me think of the line from John Lennon's song "Life is what happens to you, while you're busy making other plans" - Life does in deed happen to the characters in Alice Munro's stories, and most of the time life is a bit of a bitch, really. Leaving you in your best dress put on a train, not at your own wedding, which you thought you were going to.
To a certain extent this makes the stories a bit depressing (life does not seem to take many happy turns!), but at the same time the stories are well crafted and the brief slices of life described are well crafted and fell like full characters. And it is a fascinating look into many ways of canadian life - a country one hears little about, apart from the funny pronunciation of that word "aboot", and as a light version of USA (without the death and violence).
PS: Did you know John Lennon was just quoting Allen Saunders? The things you learn on the internet.
To a certain extent this makes the stories a bit depressing (life does not seem to take many happy turns!), but at the same time the stories are well crafted and the brief slices of life described are well crafted and fell like full characters. And it is a fascinating look into many ways of canadian life - a country one hears little about, apart from the funny pronunciation of that word "aboot", and as a light version of USA (without the death and violence).
PS: Did you know John Lennon was just quoting Allen Saunders? The things you learn on the internet.