Selected Stories

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: A superb collection
Review: Munro is one of the greatest writers of short stories of our time--perhaps of all time. There's not a dud in the collection. I have read some of the strories--Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, The Beggar Maid, The Albanian Virgin--several times and find something new each time. I cannot reccommend this book enough

Rating:
Summary: Treacherous
Review: The collection never settles into a single genre of short story. Ms. Munro is a master of them all. The collection mixes and matches so the reader remains vulnerable. Just when you begin to feel that it is getting repetitive, you are blind-sided. I never settled into this large volume, but was unable to leave it.

Life is stranger than fiction, and these tales ride perilously close to being life, but never lose their credibility. There is often the reaction of, "That is one strange story, but yes, I guess it could have happened. Weird but real."

She lacks Toni Morrison's turn of phrase, but is peerles for the ease with which she twists and turns the plots and sub-plots.

An outstanding read.