Many of the themes which resurface in Alice Munro's fiction play an important role in "Working for a Living". 2006; Vintage, 2008 One of the first which strikes readers is the question of town versus country, which plays such a predominant role in both Lives of Girls and
This Alice Munro story might serve as a sixteen-page synposis for why some high-school students came to hate the idea of reading Canadian authors. McClelland & Stewart, 2006 If you weren't raised on Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? If you weren't an obsessive listener to weekly episodes of Winter Without Salt read aloud
The Laidlaws have left the Ettrick Valley in Scotland behind, that parish with "no advantages", but the family members also have left behind "long, outspoken, sometimes outrageous letters, and detailed recollections" which have inspired Alice Munro to narrate the experiences of her ancestors. McClelland & Stewart, 2006 But
The title story in this collection follows "No Advantages" closely. It presents Old James the father, Andrew, Walter, and their sister Mary, Andrew’s wife Agnes, and Agnes and Andrew’s son James,"under two years old", and recounts their experiences from "the harbor of Leith, on the 4th of June, 1818, [when] they set
McClelland & Stewart, 2006 The View from Castle Rock was not one of my favourite Alice Munro collections. Although I rushed to read it upon publication, I didn’t enjoy it as much as Runaway. On rereading, I planned a different approach. In the past, I read the collection
