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A review by geoffdgeorge
Open Secrets by Alice Munro
Took my time with this one. Only read about a story a month. Munro puts together some of the densest, richest forty- to sixty-page stretches out there. She pushes you to pay attention, focus in on every detail, the importance of which might not emerge till twenty pages later. Stand-out stories included “A Real Life,” “Open Secrets,” and “The Jack Randa Hotel.”
I’m convinced it’s not a question of whether Munro had an affair but how many, given that it’s such a consistent, intimately explored theme throughout her work. From all angles, too—the cheaters, the cheated on, the third-hand witnesses, in trysts ranging from minutes or hours to months or years.
Most of the stories take place in small towns in the Canadian countryside, but they hit home just as well here in the US Midwest. And they aren’t the small towns of Norman Rockwell, either. So many characters are refreshingly opinionated, distant, or sometimes outright mean, just in that way endemic to rural areas where everyone often puts on a veil of politeness: Muriel Snow had not been Millicent’s first choice for best friend. What a cold line!
I think the stories in "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” might still have packed a greater emotional wallop for me, but you can still see here why Munro’s one of the greats.
I’m convinced it’s not a question of whether Munro had an affair but how many, given that it’s such a consistent, intimately explored theme throughout her work. From all angles, too—the cheaters, the cheated on, the third-hand witnesses, in trysts ranging from minutes or hours to months or years.
Most of the stories take place in small towns in the Canadian countryside, but they hit home just as well here in the US Midwest. And they aren’t the small towns of Norman Rockwell, either. So many characters are refreshingly opinionated, distant, or sometimes outright mean, just in that way endemic to rural areas where everyone often puts on a veil of politeness: Muriel Snow had not been Millicent’s first choice for best friend. What a cold line!
I think the stories in "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” might still have packed a greater emotional wallop for me, but you can still see here why Munro’s one of the greats.