Product Description

Ranging from the 1850s to the present and from Ontario to Brisbane and Albania, these eight linked stories are concerned with the daily threads of life in two small Ontario towns. All the stories centre on unconventional women who refuse to let themselves be constrained by society or everyday life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80925 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

A.S. Byatt
'Alice Munro excites the writer in me – there is something new to learn from her in every sentence'

Lucy Hughes-Hallet, Sunday Times
‘Alice Munro's stories are miraculous'

New York Times
‘A book that dazzles with its faith in language and life'

Customer Reviews

Please Open Secrets
On the whole, I have to confess my annoyance at the short story; I find it amazingly difficult to immerse myself in the plot, where you know 20 pages later, you'll be met with a happily rounded- off story and little to mull over. So thank God for Open Secrets! In this, Alice Munro twists and pulls the short story genre until it is as unrecognisable as it is unpredictable- so very rereshing!
In Open Secrets the stories do not revolve around plot, allowing the reader to become connected through location, character relations and intrigue rather than linear events. For example, the title story centres on the small- town gossip of a local girl's murder, and while we don't ever find out the truth of events, a woman's intuition and the insight we get into small community life tells us more than we can articulate. For it is this that makes Munro's collection so marvellous- the fact that we can read a story and arrive at a feeling, rather than a conclusion, articulating not the truth, but feminine ideology and selfhood.

Open Secrets
Wondefful evocation of old rural Canada. Strong characters, some stories humdrum others real gems both written 'eloquently'