Short stories « Buried In Print

“Goodness and Mercy” Alice Munro

This title recalls Barbara’s “Oranges and Apples” game, the idea of having to choose between two things.

1990; Penguin, 1991

It also echoes Anne having asked Matthew, en route to Green Gables: “Which would you rather be if you had the choice–divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

And, yet, the overt allusion [...]

“Pictures of the Ice” Alice Munro

It is often said that a single story by Alice Munro contains as much complexity as a novel written by another writer.

1990; Penguin, 1991

One might recall long stories like “Chaddeleys and Flemings” or expansive stories like “The Moon over the Orange Street Skating Rink” or, in this collection, its title story or “Meneseteung”.

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“Oranges and Apples” Alice Munro

At one time, Zeigler’s Department Store had a grocery department and a hardware department, but no longer.

1990; Penguin, 1991

The store assortment has changed. The role of the department store has changed. Downtown Walley has changed. And, perhaps most significantly, Murray has changed.

When the story opens, Murray’s father is telling him that he [...]

“Hold Me Fast, Don’t Let Me Pass” Alice Munro

When Hazel Curtis travels to Scotland, she tells people that it was a trip that she and Jack had always planned to take together.

1990; Penguin, 1991

And now that she’s a widow, Jack cannot contradict Hazel, speak out to say that he never wanted to take that trip.

For now that she’s a [...]

“Meneseteung” Alice Munro

Some writers might take a book to do it. Carol Shields did, in Swann. Timothy Findley did, in The Wars.

1990; Penguin, 1991

Alice Munro takes a short story to build a life from fragments left behind.

In this case, in “Meneseteung”, the fragments are culled from a book called Offerings (“Gold lettering on [...]

“Five Points” Alice Munro

As with “Friend of My Youth”, the bulk of “Five Points” concerns a story told by one of the characters, Neil, who is speaking of events from his past, when he was a boy in British Columbia.

1990; Penguin, 1991

In both stories, the story rooted in Neil’s memories and the present-day story of [...]

“Friend of My Youth” Alice Munro

The title story of this collection begins with talk of an act being “too transparent in its hopefulness, too easy in its forgiveness”.

1990; Penguin, 1991

On first reading, this seems a straightforward observation about the narrator’s relationship with her mother.

She has been dreaming of her mother on occasion.

And this recurring dream [...]

Théodora Armstrong’s Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility (2013)

House of Anansi, 2013 Astoria Imprint

The clear skies and no wind?

That’s not often true, actually, in Théodora Armstrong’s debut collection.

The characters herein are faced with stormy conditions and life is in flux.

But 100% visibility?

That’s true: her vision is impeccable, her scope expansive but her perspective incisive.

Readers know what to [...]

This the last of four stories published at the end of Dear Life under Finale, four works that are “not quite stories” but, rather, works “autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact. I believe they are the first and last — and the closest — things I have to say about my [...]

“Voices” Alice Munro

Among the “first and last — and the closest — things I have to say about my own life”, “Voices” is one of four stories in Finale, published at the end of Dear Life as “not quite stories”, part of a “separate unit, one that is autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact”.

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