Just how old are they, these women in Alice Munro's stories, these women in "Hard-Luck Stories" in particular. "Over the past couple of years I have experienced moments of disbelief when I meet my friends in public. They look older than I think they should." These stories still feel current
These stories turn on moments in which their characters are yanked from their everyday existences. That ordinary, day-to-day life? It's there, and the reader understands its dimensions, but the focus is elsewhere. "Hard, steady work, and no money in it either. When there was fish, there was no price for
Just when I was thinking that I've been talking a lot about theme and structure with these stories, and not so much about characterization, along comes a story like "Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd" to make the point. "Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd have known each other eighty years, ever
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
