The details in "Post and Bean" matter. The specific itty-bitty matters of surprising consequence. Not necessarily what one sees at first glance, but what one uncovers, what the broader whole can be understood to mean. Take the group of people in the church office. At first, a stranger to the
Sometimes, when I begin reading an Alice Munro story, I am overwhelmed by a sense of "there it is". It's a feeling of immediate and undeniable recognition of familiar elements. Like the beginning of "Nettles", which begins with firmly rooting the reader in a time and place. It is summer.
While Nina was playing tennis, Lewis was killing himself. Readers learn this at the outset. Nina played; Lewis died. Back and forth across the net, Nina volleyed and returned serves; Lewis plunged downward into first unconsciousness, then... Into, what? As a science teacher, who insisted that evolution be taught in classrooms
An excess of short stories in the later part of this year has led to a decision to return to the habit of more often devoting entire posts to collections rather than covering a variety in a single pass (last seen in Quarterly Stories: Autumn 2014) Algonquin Books, 2014
As readers will guess from the title, Diane Cook's collection of stories has an archetypal reach. HarperCollins, 2014 These are stories that one can imagine discussing at length in creative writing classes, stories that could nestle into the curricula of English courses which study contemporary American fiction. But there
