Runaway : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Reading
Review: "Runaway" contains a series of well written stories that delve into the thoughts and dreams of all of us. The characters are charming and easy to relate to. The stories leave you thinking long after you read them. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys short stories, and as well, other short story books I especially enjoyed were "Bedtime Stories for Women" for more erotic reading, and "Everything's Eventual" for a more thrilling read. All three of these books were gifts, and I can't remember a gift I've enjoyed more.

Rating:
Summary: Munro's latest collection of well-crafted tales is a winner
Review: I have been learning to knit lately, and I'm still at the stage where each stitch is awkward and laborious. Watching my friend and teacher do it is quite different --- smooth and rhythmic, neither too much tension nor too little. I see that knitting is a mysterious architecture of wool and soul in which every loop and turn depends on every other, and with a single missed link the whole web can collapse.

Reading the Canadian writer Alice Munro is similar to this. Her stories are woven with such craft that it seems almost as if she is describing something that really happened rather than inventing it. And the consequences of a lucky encounter or a fateful decision are still playing out years later.

I must admit that I was intimidated by the prospect of reviewing Munro's latest collection, RUNAWAY, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2004 by the New York Times. She is probably my favorite living writer, and so unpretentious about what she does that the last thing I want is to describe her fiction in words fancier or more self-conscious (in one review, I found adumbrate, transformative, sustenance, and salvation) than the language she uses herself.

I'm not alone in feeling perplexed. Jonathan Franzen, writing in the New York Times Book Review (November 14, 2004), was so reluctant to do an ordinary review of this extraordinary writer that instead he produced a (brilliant) list of "guesses at why [Munro's] excellence so dismayingly exceeds her fame." And it's true: She is revered rather than celebrated --- no Pulitzer, no Nobel, not even a National Book Award (though she has won plenty of other prizes). Possibly (Franzen mentions this) it has to do with literary form: Short stories (Munro has written only one novel) have not been --- since the days of Chekhov (with whom she is regularly compared) and Saki, Katherine Mansfield and O'Henry --- as valued as much as novels. They're just not considered Big-Deal Lit.

But I am procrastinating. Without giving away the often devastating twists and surprises of the plots of these eight stories (if literary fiction isn't supposed to be suspenseful, somebody forgot to tell Munro), this is what I'd say to somebody who has never read her (if you have, you probably already have your own copy of RUNAWAY).

The first thing is the characters: I wouldn't say they are memorable in the sense that Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina are, but unlike either of those fictional ladies, they are endearingly ordinary: They don't swan around being melodramatic or heroic or incurably romantic. They are often smart, ardent girls, different from others at school, hungry for books and adventure and mystery --- like Grace in "Passion," one of my favorites in the collection. Here, Munro has crystallized the stuff of many a coming-of-age novel --- the innocence and fakery, the fear and the splendor --- into one powerful memory of a seductive family and a reckless ride. This is Munro's gift: She gathers us in with ordinary details, and a whole world opens up.

The second thing is the place: not just Canada, but a patch of western Ontario. Munro roots almost all her stories in this area a few hours from Toronto, where she grew up and now lives. "I am intoxicated by this particular landscape," she has said, and she seeds it with city people transplanted to the country (like Carla and her husband with their horse farm in the title story, "Runaway") or country people learning urban ways. There is always a tension between these two, and between other recurrent oppositions as well --- marriage and solitude, survival and suicide, faith and apostasy. Duality runs through her work like a bright thread.

The third thing that is so compelling about RUNAWAY is a powerful sense of fate, chance, destiny --- the exact word is unimportant. Frequently the structure of the stories works in a circle; you can't understand the beginning of "Trespasses" until you have read the end. Or, as in the case of the trio of interlinked stories about a woman named Juliet, you don't understand the implications of an accidental meeting in "Chance" and a fairly uneventful visit to aging parents in "Soon" until you read the third story, "Silence." These tales aren't just chronologically and thematically connected; what Munro does is more like planting time bombs in the narrative that will explode later on, when you least expect them.

This quality is even stronger in "Tricks." Robin, a nurse who lives near Stratford, Ontario, goes to see a Shakespeare play (until then, her only passion) and encounters --- yes, by accident --- Danilo, a man from Montenegro. They agree that they will meet again a year later. What happens then is a life --- and we follow Robin until she is in her sixties --- that has the arc and heartbreak and curious detachment of genuine tragedy. "Tricks" is so bold, so horrifying and at the same time so satisfying that I lived with it for days afterward.

Even though these stories are often piercingly sad, they aren't depressing. There is a wonderful strength and survivorship in the girls and women of RUNAWAY. In "Chance" Munro writes of Juliet's love of Greek (her degree is in Classics) as her "bright treasure"; in "Tricks," similarly, of Robin's anticipation of her next meeting with Danilo: "She was aware of a shine on herself, on her body, on her voice and all her doings." And in "Passion" Grace is told by her fiancé's mother, "Women always have got something, haven't they, to keep them going? That men haven't got."

RUNAWAY feels intimate and universal at the same time --- as if the author is whispering in your ear and seeing into your heart and laying bare your secrets. Perhaps that's because Munro herself has spoken of the extreme vulnerability of the "thinly clothed" writer who has only "the thing you're working on now." Her stories dig under the fences of writer and reader, and it is both disturbing and glorious.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

Rating:
Summary: This is astonishing
Review: I have not read Munro before, so this was a revelation and reaffirmation. One sometimes loses track of good writing in the plethora of books that we read and forget about. I had not read past the first page when I realized that this is the work of a master, a deliberate work of art. The reader is captured by the style and what happens in the stories is not as important as how those happenings are revealed. Then we realize we are reading about ourselves. This is a participatory book in which the reader discovers self in the ordinary experiences of the characters--the fall of a leaf from a tree or a sound in the darkness of a summer night. We are all products of accidental events, and wisdom is elusive as the wind.

Rating:
Summary: Small Moments and Revelations Beautifully Captured
Review: I have to admit I was a bit worried that these eight short stories about women may be too oriented toward the female perspective for me to appreciate fully. I am happy to report I was quite mistaken, as author Alice Munro is a gifted writer whose multi-layered writing style can be enjoyed by anyone. And the short story format suits her very well, as she tells amazing stories precisely but without making any compromise in character development or storyline.

In the title story, the author describes a young woman's attempt to leave her husband. Things have gone bad for the couple, compounded by the disappearance of their pet goat, Flora, has disappeared. The centerpiece of the collection is a triptych of stories about a woman named Juliet - "Chance", "Soon" and "Silence" - and her relationship with her mother and later with her daughter. "Chance" takes place in the 1960's and finds Juliet on a train as she unexpectedly discovers love. At the same time, Munro accurately shows Juliet's inner conflict as she hungers for a college education at a time when such notions for opportunity were ridiculed. "Soon" shows her as a young mother who goes to reconcile with her own parents and her ideas of faith. "Silence" picks up Juliet's story when she is an older woman estranged from her daughter and wondering what became of her life. The unexpected ending is haunting.

The remaining stories highlight aspects of youth both from a young girl's mindset and from the hindsight of an older woman. The best story is perhaps the last, "Powers", which is divided into titled sections. The first section begins in 1927. The last section, dating in the 1970s, describes a dream of the protagonist. In the dream, Munro writes that the past "begins to crumble behind her, to crumble and darken tenderly into something like soot and soft ash." It is this kind of observation that makes the author truly exceptional. She has written a lovely necklace of tales that illuminate human motive and behavior with piercing insight. Munro is a master of the small moment and how each one expands into revelations for which neither her characters nor we ever seem to be prepared. Highly recommended for both genders.

Rating:
Summary: Not really my cuppa, but I understand the appeal.
Review: I read this collection feeling as if I was missing something, and perhaps I was. I enjoyed the stories well enough, but they really didn't seem to be as finely wrought and resonant as some of Ms. Munro's ardent defenders claim. Still, I read on, and that's saying a lot. I think the one reviewer who compared Munro to Flannery O'Connor may have unwittingly nailed it, for me. O'Connor is sort of the ne plus ultra of short-story writing provincial women obsessed with certain scenarios, characters, and images, and I've been going back to dip into her complete stories again and again for years. Munro's pretty good, but she's no O'Connor.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful writing, bland stories.
Review: I understand that I am in the minority on this one. Please understand that I have nothing but respect for Ms. Munro's gifts, I just felt that this collection of stories was listless and bland. There was nothing relevatory, nothing gripping, nothing that moved me. There was no introspection after reading these stories, there was only passing recognition of some of the characters.

It felt shallow to me. Perhaps that was the point with some characters, but the entire time I felt as if each character was talking slightly tilted away from the person they were addressing, as if they were reciting things that they _should_ say, not anything that actually reverberated as the truth.

To be clear, I'm not looking for high drama. I can see the drama in life's little complexities as well as the next devotee of the New Yorker, but these stories come off as someone relaying the mildly interesting stories of some mildly interesting people. And that, for me, is not enough. But as you can see, your mileage may vary. And I may very well be an idiot.

Rating:
Summary: Essential women's fiction
Review: Ms. Alice Munro once again shows her unique understanding of the feminine spirit in this collection of short story treasures of women searching their souls, seeking and finding themselves through the triumph and tragedy of the journey that is life. Highly recommend. Another women's classic


Rating:
Summary: Thrilled that others love these stories as much as I do
Review: There is one story of mother and daughter that will absolutely nail your heart to the wall, especially if you are a parent. I won't go into detail, of course, but there is nothing unrealistic or sappy here. In fact, the stories are so well told, so real, that you walk away enhanced, you understand life a little better and you will be more careful in your relationships with family and friends. You also may feel a kinship with Canada and a life so opposite of Hollywood America. I ordered five more Munro books.

Rating:
Summary: Typical Brilliance
Review: These stories are subtle and lush and refract immense light. There is no relationship, especially any regarding women, that is not examined with great care and great insight. Alice Munro is one of the best at capturing women and the ties that bind us together, and sometimes these ties are subtle, and I love how artfully she manages this over the course of this collection. Make sure that you read the stories in order so you can absorb the connections back to previous people and events. "Runaway" may very well be as strong as "Friend of My Youth." This and Jennifer Paddock's brilliant novel-in-stories "A Secret Word" are easily the best books I've read this year. Easily.

Rating:
Summary: Inspirational
Review: This is a beautifully written work and a pleasure to read. I had not read Munro before until I laid my hands on this book. That is why I consider this book as a revelation .The stories are heart-touching, full of lessons and inspirational. The characters are rich, vividly drawn and genuine. I must add that the stories are very insightful, and with that comes the boundlessness and timelessness of it all, as they show how small events can change lives, and how different those events appear to us after. Munro's unique portrayal of everyday aspects of life is rare around and the richness of it will make you want to read all of her other books. Most of the stories tell us how the characters that are easy to relate to are changed by events for forever The fact that this book is a series of well written stories that delve into the thoughts and dreams of the characters, thoughts and dreams that we all share, makes RUNAWAY and the other stories a recommended read. It is a superbly written work that takes its time to work its charm on you.

Also recommended: THE USURPER by Janvier Tisi