Reflecting a fictional timeline into the reader's world adds another layer of credibility to the tale. It's that much easier to imagine the characters in "Labor Day Dinner" taking shape, when you're reading it as Labour Day weekend approaches. Structurally, the story is complex, although at first glance it is
I wish that I could introduce the narrator of the last story, "Bardon Bus", to Prue. I like to imagine them sitting together in a cozy neighbourhood bar -- nothing fancy, rather the sort of bar to which people go to be heard rather than to be seen -- in
"I come of straightened people, madly secretive, tenacious, economical." The first segment of the story introduces the reader to the narrator of "Bardon Bus" in a way which recalls other heroines in other stories. "Like them, I could make a little go a long way." (If you've recently read Who
"Frances is loitering by a second-floor window of the high school in Hanratty, on an afternoon in early December. It is 1943." Loitering: it's a significant word. There is something unsanctioned about her presence there. And, yet, she is a high-school teacher. But she has no business being on the
Whether it's Alva's job in a summer resort in "Sunday Afternoon" or Edie looking after the kids and doing what needs doing in "How I Met My Husband", Alice Munro captures the twinned knowingness and vulnerability of a girl in her first job. Few other authors (Alissa York would be
