Rating: 
Summary: Not quite at the Munro level, but still fabulous
Review: The theme of this short story collection is the various paths that love escorts individuals down. Some of the stories are filled with passion; other nostalgia. The characters vary as the stories vary. Love can be man and woman, mother and daughter, siblings, etc. The stories do not always end happily ever after as the characters dive deeper into morass due to one exposure after another of some dark secrets. Alice Munro has a deserved reputation for some of the best literary works of the nineties. Her current anthology, THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN, overall is a well-written collection, but does not seem to reach the level of excellence set by the author in her previous works. Though several of the eight stories are excellent, some of the tales seem to need constant shock therapy to keep the heart pumping as Ms. Munro reveals one new disjointed surprise after another to keep the story line moving, but only jolts the reader's flow. Overall, this is a fabulous book, but readers need to be aware that it is not on the Munro level of quality. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Mushy Middle but Firm Finale
Review: After the first fairly gripping story, the fiction quickly falls into some Alice Mundane prose and it seems like it's going to be that way for the long haul. The author seems to have forgotten the necessity of plot in several stories, and the reader is left dragging along to the end only because of confidence in an otherwise accomplished writer. "Cortes Island" has some worthwhile character development, but "Jakarta" and "Save the Reaper" feel like directionless wandering, as if Munro is playing the grandson's alien chase game with her story development: see a possibility, grab onto it there for a while and see where it goes and then grab onto another. While this technique can certainly be successful and give the image of "living" or "evolution" fiction, it doesn't always work, and these three stories prove it. Furthermore, the "shocking" action of her characters is not believable enough because, despite all the drawn-out development, the reader still can't see the justification in the character's minds. Sure, everyone does the unexpected sometimes, but if all Munro's characters do that, we lose the idea of the story. Pauline, for example, in "The Children Stay," seems to feel too much devotion and affection for her children to be able to just forget them completely for a wild night of sex that leaves her sore, even though they interrupt her life. Most women find that children interfere with the professional, artistic, social (etc) lives they had before becoming mothers, so what sets Pauline apart to actually be able to leave the girls forever for a romance that turns out to be a fling anyway? Munro didn't prepare us enough for her decision, and the story is weakened. The real genius of her work starts to emerge again, though, with "Rich as Stink." A mature little girl and her childish mother create an interesting role reversal which must meet its limits finally in a powerful way, when nature takes charge. This story feels glued together with real intrigue, although the purpose and development of the minor characters could have been improved. "Before the Change" is reminiscent of Munro's previous work, with a letter-writing young woman revealing her story to her (ex) lover. Here we see Munro's capability with powerful character development and loose links which neatly connect in the end. Certainly the finest story in the collection is the last-- "My Mother's Dream" was so intricately handled it is worth an award by itself. Munro provides, finally, a more appropriate number of characters for a short story and is able to present and enrich them throughout the work effectively. She brings us into the world of the family here, pulling us in with suspense and connection, making us truly care about the people and hope for them and with them and get completely involved. Finally, as is true of the entire collection as well, Munro does not disappoint us in the end. Just when you were about to say, "She's losing her knack for the great short story form," she whacks you with three whoppers and whispers, "My dear, I am never too old to tell a great tale."
Rating:
Summary: Mushy Middle but Firm Finale
Review: After the first fairly gripping story, the fiction quickly falls into some Alice Mundane prose and it seems like it's going to be that way for the long haul. The author seems to have forgotten the necessity of plot in several stories, and the reader is left dragging along to the end only because of confidence in an otherwise accomplished writer. "Cortes Island" has some worthwhile character development, but "Jakarta" and "Save the Reaper" feel like directionless wandering, as if Munro is playing the grandson's alien chase game with her story development: see a possibility, grab onto it there for a while and see where it goes and then grab onto another. While this technique can certainly be successful and give the image of "living" or "evolution" fiction, it doesn't always work, and these three stories prove it. Furthermore, the "shocking" action of her characters is not believable enough because, despite all the drawn-out development, the reader still can't see the justification in the character's minds. Sure, everyone does the unexpected sometimes, but if all Munro's characters do that, we lose the idea of the story. Pauline, for example, in "The Children Stay," seems to feel too much devotion and affection for her children to be able to just forget them completely for a wild night of sex that leaves her sore, even though they interrupt her life. Most women find that children interfere with the professional, artistic, social (etc) lives they had before becoming mothers, so what sets Pauline apart to actually be able to leave the girls forever for a romance that turns out to be a fling anyway? Munro didn't prepare us enough for her decision, and the story is weakened. The real genius of her work starts to emerge again, though, with "Rich as Stink." A mature little girl and her childish mother create an interesting role reversal which must meet its limits finally in a powerful way, when nature takes charge. This story feels glued together with real intrigue, although the purpose and development of the minor characters could have been improved. "Before the Change" is reminiscent of Munro's previous work, with a letter-writing young woman revealing her story to her (ex) lover. Here we see Munro's capability with powerful character development and loose links which neatly connect in the end. Certainly the finest story in the collection is the last-- "My Mother's Dream" was so intricately handled it is worth an award by itself. Munro provides, finally, a more appropriate number of characters for a short story and is able to present and enrich them throughout the work effectively. She brings us into the world of the family here, pulling us in with suspense and connection, making us truly care about the people and hope for them and with them and get completely involved. Finally, as is true of the entire collection as well, Munro does not disappoint us in the end. Just when you were about to say, "She's losing her knack for the great short story form," she whacks you with three whoppers and whispers, "My dear, I am never too old to tell a great tale."
Rating:
Summary: A real treasure
Review: Alice Munro was recommended to me as a master of the short story form and I was not disappointed. This collection is wonderfully deep and complex - simple and ordinary on the surface but seething with subtle passion beneath. Her ability to shift time and viewpoint is effective and powerful. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: PAST HER PRIME
Review: All things considered, my favourite fictional narrative is the short story. If you read a novel, you may struggle through a hundred pages before realizing that you have wasted your time. A short story can avoid this dilemma by giving the reader either instant gratification or dissatisfaction. Two universal attributes of a great short story are that they are short and that they tell a story. Anything else is a long narrative.
My favorite short story writers are Chekhov, Maupassant with defernce to William Trevor and Penelope Lively
Years ago I read the Moons of Jupiter an earlier collection of Ms. Munroe. They were enjoyable with all the attributes that I look for in a good short story. She has an obvious grasp of human relationships. though the quality that I liked best was the emphasis on choice. Everyone was free to make their own decisions, no Thomas Hardy predeterminism here. The later collection shows a change in technique. Jakarta, Save the Reaper, and Rich as Stink (what a sense of poetry!) are complex stories with frequent shifts of time and place. I find this constant confusion distracting. Please don't abandon the sequential universe!!!
There are however many qualities in this collection that I enjoyed. The first episode with children in a small town in the late forties was similar to my own experience in a mining town during the war. Her portrait of the awful Mrs. Quin was masterly and believable. The problem is that I do not think that the linkages of the three seperate events really succeeds. By far the most successful story is the Children Stay. This is about a Canadian Anne Karinina scting out her role while playing in an amature dramatic production of Anouilh's Orpheus. Here we have a woman willing to leave her husband and family to run away with a semi itinerant for immediate sexual passion, which is of only brief duration. I liked the final scene in Rich as Stink wher Karin, wearing the wedding dress of the wife of her mothers lover suffers third degree burns when it catches fire. This is a nice ironic twist as it implies that marriage for Karin is like playing with fire. Meanwhile Anne and Derek (the mothers lover)
have resumed their marriage and run of into the sunset.
For me Jakarta was the story that provided the most interest. The background and action mostly take place in the sixties. Two couples are used to illustrate the two divergent views of society at that time. Kent and Kathy Mayberry are a conventional careerist couple, Kent being a pharmacist climbing the corporate ladder and Kathy a middle class housewife. Sonia and Cotter are are a counter culture couple. Cotter is a progressive journalist and Sonia the adoring doormat of a wife. The first part trace the friendship of Kathy and Sonia and uses two short stories The Fox by D.H. Lawrence and Kathleen Mansfield's The Bay to show the essential way that these two marriages differ. Kathy sees marriage as an equal partnership though as witnessed in the beach party shes not above having a fling. Sonia is Lawrence's ideal women seeing herself as an adjunct to her husband . She would never cheat on her husband though he openly sleeps with many other woman. The fate of the two couples is interesting. At the end of the story Kent is married to his third wife a girl younger than his daughter . Cotter who disappeared in the late sixties is presumed to have died in Indonesia. We are led to question whether this is genuine or staged. In spite of the implied setup, Sonia still dreams of going to Indonesia to find him. After this event Sonia spends many years looking after Delia Cotter's blind mother. Once a doormat always a doormat.
My final thoughts is that when Ms. Munroe sticks to her regular style she is very good at capturing the time and place of an event. When she expands we are confronted with a blizzard of words hiding cryptic clues and at times a meandering narrative. At this point I long for my Chekhov.
Rating:
Summary: masterful
Review: Get this collection simply for The Children Stay, one of the
most effective evocations of ache and regret ever set down on paper (and then, because she is Alice Munro, she quickly shows us how ultimately meaningless regret can become in an individual life, given time). In her stories, there are no right or wrong choices, there is no fate, and the stories often extend long past the consequences of her characters' actions, for better or worse, often, whatever they've done, however extreme, they are not punished nor rewarded. They are not saved. The moments of recognition or realization are sterling, perhaps, but not permanent in her characters' lives. They go on.
Rating: 
Summary: Short stories that read like a novel
Review: I have a hard time reading short stories sometimes, but these were excellent. The first one, which titles the book, is almost a novella, very well crafted. With a murder at the center of the story, you read about how this death has affected different characters, and their take on it. My second favorite story is My Mother's Dream, a very vivid account of family dynamics at a time of loss and happiness. Each one of these stories left me satisfied, with a sense of completion, and that is something i often miss when reading short stories. I highly recommend this excellent work by Alice Munro.
Rating:
Summary: Short stories that read like a novel
Review: I have a hard time reading short stories sometimes, but these were excellent. The first one, which titles the book, is almost a novella, very well crafted. With a murder at the center of the story, you read about how this death has affected different characters, and their take on it. My second favorite story is My Mother's Dream, a very vivid account of family dynamics at a time of loss and happiness. Each one of these stories left me satisfied, with a sense of completion, and that is something i often miss when reading short stories. I highly recommend this excellent work by Alice Munro.
Rating:
Summary: 2/8 make the book worth reading
Review: In Munro's Love Of A Good Woman 8 stories set in British Columbia or Ontario involve secrets and choices. Of these 8, only 2 are good. "Save The Reaper" and "My Mother's Dream" are the only two stories that have a plot! You know plot? Conflict + Resolution? The other six are just story fragments, offering a smidgen of conflict (someone isn't happy) and smidgen of resolution (a decision is made with no impetus whatsoever put on the results). Yawn. When the conflict is this vague, it does not lend itself well to a short story format. To resolve such character-driven conflicts as these, the stories need room to breathe. Instead these short stories avoid happy and inevitably sit-comish endings or pessimistic endings and are left with only one other option: no ending at all. Maybe this is supposed to be presented as clever or provocative but in my mind it was frustrating. If only they were expanded into individual novels. Who can't come up with conflicts and leave them unresolved? However, Alice Munro's unpretentious dialogue and revealing characters are intriguing and when she uses them in actual complete stories, such as Reaper and Dream, near- perfection is achieved. The only reason I say "near" is because of a tiny (but huge) disjointed sentence in Reaper. As the grandmother character finds herself out of one perilous situation and into another; sitting next to a prostitute with her grandchildren in the back seat of her car, Munro's preoccupation with sex thrusts the reader back into reality. Momentarily ruining the fantasy. Up to that point, I found my heart beating synchronously with the grandmother- and when the prostitute touches the grandmother's thigh I found myself wondering if things could get any worse. But then I was jarred out of the story altogether. The grandmother was slightly awakened and turned on by the prostitute! Yeah, right! However, I ended up liking the story so much that I'm making an effort to ignore that line (obviously with little success so far). My Mother's Dream at the end was complete perfection (a good note to end on). It had a fully realized plot and no absurd sexual remark. If only the rest of the book was that good.
Rating:
Summary: Just right
Review: Munro's tone and style have only improved with time. The Love of a Good Woman has depth and insight the mark the author's rare voice. A true delight to read, filled with pathos and moments that will cause the reader to smile softly, thinking, "Yes, I know exactly how that feels." Worth the price and for many, will be a beloved part of a personal library; it stands repeated readings.
|
