Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (Everyman's Library)
by Alice Munro
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alice MunroEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-26
ISBN: 0307264866
Number of pages: 600
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Book Reviews of Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (Everyman's Library)
Book Review: A 'best of' collection from one of the world's foremost authors
Summary: 5 Stars
Alice Munro is one of the foremost writers of our time, but she is not well-known in the US, probably because she writes primarily short stories, a genre not particularly well sold here. But if one only gives her a chance, they will find her short stories are of such depth and detail and emotion and pain and regret and every other part of humanity, that they are just as satisfying as the best novels we could read.
Carried Away is a collection of her best stories up to 2004's Runaway. For those who haven't read her, this is a great place to start. The selection starts with the best from her 1978 collection, Who Do You Think You Are?, and samples her best work throughout the 80's and 90's. Munro herself is from southwest Ontario, Canada, and most of her stories are set here. They are almost an anthropological study of the people there in their precise detail. In fact, Munro is often compared to Chekhov for that detail, the omniscient narrator she often employs, and the placing of moments of epiphany over plot in her hierarchy of literary priorities. She also likes to shift around in time, as well as perspectives, to give the reader a well-rounded view of the story. I especially like this Rashomon-type technique, as it allows the reader to come to the truth despite the subjectivity and biases of the individual characters.
All of the stories collected here are excellent, but the two that close the collection are my favorites. `Runaway' is about an unhappy woman who considers leaving her husband. In this story, all of Munro's techniques are on display to paint a heartbreaking portrait of a woman trying to come to terms with her husband and her life. There are the multiple POVs, the stark and detailed narrative, and the use of letters to reveal a truth. The collection ends with `The Bear Came Over the Mountain', a touching story of an elderly woman with dementia and her husband. In it, we learn to what lengths someone will go to maintain the dignity of those they love, while also caring for their own needs.
For anyone interested in fiction, Alice Munro is an author you must become acquainted with. Carried Away is a great place to start.
Summary of Carried Away: A Selection of Stories (Everyman's Library)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Carried Away is a dazzling selection of stories?seventeen favorites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career.
Alice Munro has been repeatedly hailed as one of our greatest living writers, a reputation that has been growing for years. The stories brought together here span a quarter century, drawn from some of her earliest books, The Beggar Maid and The Moons of Jupiter, through her recent best-selling collection, Runaway.
Here are such favorites as ?Royal Beatings? in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; ?Friend of My Youth? in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and ?The Love of a Good Woman,? in which, when an old crime resurfaces, a woman has to choose whether to believe in the man she intends to marry.
Munro?s incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn?t know change her life forever, Munro?s unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold.
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