Product Description

In these stories whose lives come into focus through single events or sudden memories which bring the past bubbling to the surface. The past, as her characters discover, is made up not only of what is remembered, but also what isn't. The past is there, just out of the picture, but if memories haven't been savoured, recalled in the mind and boxed away, it's as if they have never been until a moment when the pieces of the jigsaw re-form suddenly, sometimes pleasurably but more often painfully. Women look back at their young selves, at first marriages made when they were naive and trusting, at husbands and their difficult, demanding little ways. There is in this new collection an underlying heartbreak, a sense of regret in her characters for what might have been, for a fork in the road not taken, a memory suppressed in an act of prudent emotional housekeeping. But at the same time there is hope, there are second changes her are people who reinvent themselves, seize life by the throat, who have moved on and can dare to conjure up the hidden memories, daring to go beyond what is remembered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28603 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The award-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro's collection Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage is about the lives, hopes, dreams and ends of women: their marriages, their relationships with those who touch their lives in some momentous way--however brief or long-standing--and the extraordinary effects wrought by the hand of fate. She is not only a genius storyteller, she has a cunning ability to make you believe the short story you've just read was actually a full-length novel. So if you've ever thought twice about buying a book of short stories, then the marvellous Alice Munro will make you think again..

Munro's world is one of post-war Canada, when women are beginning to experience a constrained kind of freedom. In "What is Remembered", a chance meeting at a funeral has a profound, yet stabilising effect on Meriel, a young wife and mother. "Young husbands", writes Munro, "were stern in those days". Between learning how to kowtow to bosses and manage wives, there was so much else to learn: mortgages, lawns and politics for a start. The wives, meantime, were afforded the opportunity of "a second kind of adolescence"--but only in the confines of the family home, while the men were absent, and only after wifely jobs were accounted for. In the book's title story, a capable, spinsterly housekeeper finds love in the most unexpected place, in the most unexpected way. However the opportunity presents itself, it is what you choose to make of it that really matters, the author seems to be saying. Johanna could be deeply disappointed with her "opportunity" but, in her straightforward way, amends a few details and makes the most of it.

Alice Munro's stories are retrospective; tales of lives lived, for better or worse. If you want something, take it, quickly. You only get one life, and this is it. --Carey Green

Review
'Another breathtaking demonstration of her mastery of the short story...No one could possibly dispute Munro's greatness; the genius of her seamless, unmatchable prose which nets up the flow of everyday life so miraculously' Daily Mail; 'Munro gives each of her stories the rich density of a compacted novel...The distinctive vitality of her stories comes from their imaginative limberness... triumphantly displays impressive feats of flexibility, always gracefully adapted to life's twists and turns' Sunday Times; 'There is a core of mystery in every Munro story, and that is why re-reading them is such a continuous pleasure' Independent

Sunday Times
‘triumphantly displays impressive feats of flexibility, always gracefully adapted to life’s twists and turns’

Customer Reviews

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.