Selected Stories

Rating:
Summary: Is there a better storyteller in the world?
Review: Absolutely not! In these stories Munro shows how complete stories can be; these feel like novellas, not stories. "Dance of the Happy Shades," is spectacular (particularly as it was one of her earliest stories); the paragraph describing the music teacher sitting by the piano as the retarded girl played absolutely took away my breath. This collection is just teeming with riches. Read "The Beggar Maid" immediately, and then proceed directly to "Fits" and "Material." There isn't a weak link in this collection. Munro's style at first may seem bland, but she pulls you right into these characters' lives and offers surprising insights on the emptiness of extramarital affairs after their initial euphoria. Her characters are all a little disappointed with the world, but filled with wistfulness, too. I can't think of more sensitive portraits of women than these stories. I hope she keeps writing for another forty years.

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous, compelling and memorable!
Review: Alice Munro gives us a quick and sometimes fleeting glimpse into the inner workings of the stories' characters and lives. This is one of the most literary short-story collections I've ever read. All of the stories in this collection are powerful and intense. Munro has the ability to add tremendous depth in a short story. It isn't easy to have precise characterization and story development in short stories, but Munro does a brilliant work in creating memorable characters and compelling tale in just a few pages. I can't recommend this wonderful collection enough.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite, but...
Review: Alice Munro is rightfully considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the English-speaking world. Certainly a story like "The Progress of Love," in this volume--a rich, poignantly ironic delineation of the selectivity of memory--is proof enough that Munro is as great as her reputation would have it, and that she is one of the few living writers who deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Chekhov. Nevertheless, plowing through her Selected Stories is like gorging on a box of chocolates; you'd be a lot better off savoring just one or two at a time. The maiin problem is that Munro's subject range is narrow. How many stories can you read in one sitting about women from impoverished small-town Ontario, who are misunderstood and often brutalized by their families, boyfriends and husbands? (The reviewers who called Munro's women weak are misreading the stories severely; these women could have hauled the wounded Titanic to port, 2,000 passengers and all, single-handedly. They have the clemency of the very strong, which unfortunately means that weaker, more spiteful souls can walk all over them.) Yet within each story, Munro's elegant, lucid prose style and encyclopedic knowledge of the human mind and heart make themselves felt. I will reread stories such as "Material," "Chaddeleys and Flemings," "Dulse," "The Turkey Season" and "The Beggar Maid" with joy and admiration for their perfect artistry. But I'll have to wait to reread stories such as "Labor Day Dinner," which after an unrelieved diet of Munro stories can almost seem like a parody of the author. Do yourself a favor; buy this wonderful book, but savor its delights sparingly, as you would a box of Godivas.

Rating:
Summary: Infuriating
Review: Although I did enjoy the first two stories in this collection, that enjoyment dramaticially decreased as I read through the rest of the book. Munro's almost constant use of WEAK female characters is infuriating, and I personally am offended by it. Munro also aims to be realisitc, but after a certain point, all of the stories seem to have the exact same conflict but with different character names. While I read the first story in the collection "Walker Brother Cowboys," I had high expectaions; unfortunately, after the first 8 or 10 stories, I was very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Good and bad....
Review: The short stories that were written in this book were very detailed and had excellent style and really kept the reader entranced. The only problem was that each story seemed to be about the same weak female characters.. it was just a different setting for each story. I definitely like how Alice Munro writes about women though, and I'm going to read some of her other works to compare them, and maybe see exactly where she is coming from.