Runaway
by Alice Munro
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alice MunroEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-08
ISBN: 1400077915
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Runaway
Book Review: Why We Run: Cowardice and the Fear of Intimacy
Summary: 5 Stars
In "Runaway," a collection of short stories, Alice Munro suggests that it is not uncommon for damaged people to flee from those they are bound to by imperfect love and devotion. It is precisely because so many people are incapable of love that there are those who seek aberrant escapes from the demands of family and marital life only to end up perpetuating monotonous and unsatisfying lives for themselves and those around them. Because of their inability to examine their own behaviors, they sink deeper and deeper into the morass of their own triviality and self-deception until their resultant boredom and self-hatred drive them to cruelty or flight. These are the walking wounded Alice Munro captures with her laser-like vision, and they are the perpetrators of many of society's ills simply because they are incapable of either exposing themselves too deeply or accommodating others' self-exposure. Narcissistic, they are unable or unwilling to accept the demands of intimacy -- which, unfortunately for them, is the necessary and most important characteristic of all longstanding relationships. Munro stands back, the silent witness, and records the subtle and overt actions of her characters. Upon reading her, one might dismiss the stories as prosaic or meaningless; it is only upon reflection that the stories yield insights into the tortured lives of people who cannot love and thus cannot experience joy or empathy or even certainty, all gifts of happy, well adjusted people. "Runaway" is a sad commentary on modernity as well as people and relationships in general.
In her story, "Passion," she describes a woman working as a waitress who catches the eye of a marriageable young man. The man idealizes her and takes her into his family with the purest of motives. He's the kind of guy all young women would want: handsome, smart, from a good family with its own values on track, but she is essentially cold when it comes to human relationships unless there is an edginess to them. When she goes off on a drive with her fiancé's brother and establishes an intimacy of sorts, she is paid off by the family, a "gift" she accepts since life is all about her, even if the consequences of her indiscretion were dire and her own fault. What appears to propel her behavior is not a desire to be in control or even a predatory self-gratification, but a bovine-like senselessness, a desire to take risks, and inexplicable self-destructive urges. Munro seems to imply that she will end up living the inane, monotonous life she deserves after her risky relationships have lost their appeal and despite the fact that she is intelligent enough to make a meaningful life for herself. She is a "runaway" out of choice because stability and predictability are not what she desires; she prefers life on the edge and that life understandably precludes emotional depth. Of course, the title is ironic in that the woman doesn't know what it is like to have feelings; for her in all her superficiality risk is synonymous with passion because otherwise she is without feeling. Yet there are other ways of fleeing life; her fiance's mother, for example, is escaping via an imminent nervous breakdown. Hence, Grace, the protagonist, wisely recognizes how potentially destructive it can be to accept the role of a married woman. Perhaps for this reason as much as any, Grace lives on the edge, not wanting to surrender her vulnerability to any man. When the family informs her that her fiance's mother's former husband committed suicide and then she is requested to "take care" of her fiance's alcoholic brother, she recognizes her own power as well as the imprisoning responsibility of conventional marriage. Her epiphany is the glimpse of the woman's archetypal role, and it is not pleasant. Thus is Grace "cold" for a reason, even if no one else appears to understand that about her.
Another story, "Chance," is about a woman who is dull and somnambulant and odd because she has immersed herself in the reading of the classics to the extent that her romanticism and denial result in a disregard for the essence of her own life. Motivated by the absurdity of people without direction, she stumbles into a relationship with a man, has a child and ends up losing the daughter to a cult. Eventually the daughter writes the mother out of her life completely, never to see her again while the daughter matures and raises her own five children. Once more, the protagonist experiences that lost promise of life's rewards, that desolation of spirit that happens when you lose sight of the value of love, family and responsibility to others. "Chance" is a story of a pathetic woman who couldn't give of herself enough to satisfy her only child or her lover, instead electing to read the classics as a substitute for life. She lives out the rest of her years clinging to anything Greek as if existing vicariously in an anachronistic world. She moves from dwelling to dwelling, each one shrinking in size as if to suggest her own world is shrinking as well, her passion and capacity for love declining until she has one friend, a professor who connects with her on a superficial level only. She has her employers who own a Greek restaurant, establishing for her in that association a sense of what she's about: oddness and exile and brittle substitutes for love and passion, as well as Narcissism, which was so prevalent among the Greeks that it fits that she would see that cultural legacy as her own. The title refers to the fact that we have only one life, one chance, and hers is measured by insignificance and shallow, futile, directionless effort. Thus, she can coldly choose money, a payoff, over any relationship.
"Trespasses" concerns the effects toxic people have on their children and others. Since children are the most vulnerable, this story resonates, leaving as bitter an aftertaste as is possible in short fiction. The parents, Eileen and Harry, are presented as itinerant types, he a journalist; both are drinkers and loose in their sexual behavior around their daughter, but if that seems injurious enough to a teen, it is more the secrets of their life together and their general callousness that are the most horrific examples of man's inhumanity. When it is revealed that a woman who was presumably the mother of a baby the couple adopted years ago is not agreeable to taking their present child off the couple's hands, the story takes on a sinister tone. The snowy landscape and the moldering ambience of the old hotel where the woman works as well as her low-life appearance and behavior symbolize the child's parentage, the house the three live in, and the remote town to which the family has fled. A startling comment at the end reveals the nature of the parents' request made earlier out of the girl's presence. The reader slowly grasps the nauseating implication, not only of the three adults' incapacities to love and be honest, but of their vast superficiality and emotional coldness. Although all are quick to assure the girl of their love or concern, not one of them is anything but poisonous in their self-centeredness and lack of sincerity. This is particularly disturbing because all three adults act as if they do care about the daughter who is struggling to understand her parents and the lies that are implicit in their lifestyle. Harry's profession is journalism, but he is more about suppressing truth or denying it than he is about communicating or living by it. The title implies a desire for forgiveness for transgressions of the past, but there is no forgiveness for lies that will never end, as Harry's and Eileen's are. Their lives are one big lie, their reassurances as phony as their comments and demeanor. They are indeed "burrs," Munro's metaphor for the lies that cover the child's body and ravage her soul and that she has unwittingly allowed to shape her destiny. She is powerless to remove them and so they will be her heritage as she continues her life, attached by birth only to malevolent parents whose damage has already been done. She will forever be aware of their toxicity, as she was only subliminally before, because now the burrs reveal completely that she has been nothing more than a burden to these people who have long ago regretted their decision to adopt her. Since one cannot choose his parents or escape from them at will, this is a horrific story. However, most malevolent is the woman Delphine's terrible revelations. Sometimes it is just as damaging and threatening to the Self to reveal the truth when the desire to rectify the past is not a priority. Then such a revelation is malicious, as Delphine's confession was.
The namesake story, "Runaway," concerns a young woman living with her hotheaded, control freak husband Clark next door to a woman who travels. In her loneliness and isolation, the wife Carla considers the goat, Flora, the only farm animal she can relate to. When Flora disappears, she finds herself drawn to the neighbor next door who eventually offers to help her escape her husband's abuse. When Carla subsequently returns, she pleads with her husband, "Just don't be angry with me," but Clark continues to find fault with his wife. He cannot leave her alone; in his criticism he is sadistic and cold, incapable of caring. In a last ditch effort to tease her husband out of his nasty mood, Carla invents an intimacy with the neighbor's deceased husband, only to further arouse her husband's ire and summon his sadistic behaviors. It is because Carla finally confides to the neighbor how critical and angry her husband actually is, that the neighbor offers assistance. Carla realizes that her life is going nowhere but is helpless to redirect it. She recalls how she originally loved her husband and how she viewed the prospect of their life as possessing the authenticity she still desires.
Clark later tells the neighbor woman that his wife "is a girl who is very up and down in her emotions," suggesting that Carla is bi-polar or at the least, unstable. When the lost goat reappears on the neighbor's property, he observes, "Goats are very unpredictable." This is a description of him and explains why his wife is afraid of him. He later tells Carla, "If you ever went away, I'd feel like I didn't have anything left in me." Unfortunately, these are the words of a liar, and he has no intention of pleasing her. He is about control and the fact that she might have had any relationship with the neighbor, is abhorrent to him and justifies any actions he might take in retaliation. When Carla later happens on the evidence of a vicious act on Clark's part, she merely turns the realization into denial. In fact, both she and her husband are "runaways" in the sense that they both retreat or run away from the truths they know but do not wish to acknowledge to themselves or each other. Carla realizes she will run away from Clark again, but presently she has withdrawn her consciousness from "that place" where presumably the truth resides. This story embodies not only one's need to escape unpleasantness, it acknowledges the mind's efforts to deny the truth of marriage gone awry and one's inexplicable surrender to marital abuse out of desperation, cowardice and fear.
Munro's stories are psychologically complicated, but they are well worth reading. Sometimes the excess of seeming insignificant detail is annoying, but one reads on, drawn to the glimpses of truth revealed by subtle dialogue, concrete description and symbolism. Man is complex, unpredictable, but in the hands of a great writer, his behavior is understandable. Since that is what literary fiction should reveal, one has to cherish the writings of this master. Her language is simple, not particularly poetic or descriptive. It is the human heart that Munro reads well and it is this fantastic offering that hits one like a sledgehammer. Thank you, Alice, from all of us who try hard to understand people. You help us to comprehend the most mysterious of our comrades: those who run away out of fear and ignorance of how miraculous life could be, if one opened his heart instead of closing it.
Marjorie Meyerle
Colorado Writer
Author of "Bread of Shame"
Summary of Runaway
The incomparable Alice Munro?s bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises, from the title story about a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband, to three stories about a woman named Juliet and the emotions that complicate the luster of her intimate relationships. In Munro?s hands, the people she writes about?women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children?become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own.Short Stories Books
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