As is often the case with Alice Munro's story stories, details that a reader might overlook in everyday life take on a new significance. Take, for instance, gravel. Small chips of stone, one thinks. And, yet, gravel is actually "a loose aggregation of small water-worn or pounded stones". Although the pit
"There were two moons last August -- one that was almost full at the beginning when Mom was alive and our lives were normal, and then a big full cheater moon at the end, one that looked down so beautifully on the world when everything was awful and changed and
When readers look into the eye of Lisa Moore's fiction, they are changed. House of Anansi, 2004 "I knelt down near the fence and looked into the eye of a giant alligator that was very near the fence. The alligator did not move and did not move. I
The epigraph to Ru is the reader's first clue that this novel embraces complexity. 2009; Random House Canada, 2012 (English) The reader learns that the word, in French, means a small stream, literally (and, figuratively, a flow -- of tears, blood or memory). Whereas, in Vietnamese, 'ru' means
The turkeys, Steve Gauley, a young girl: drownings. (In my memory of this story, only one of these stood out: wrongly, as it turned out.) Re-reading "Miles City, Montana" reveals the intricate layering of Alice Munro's stories, the multiple threats of drowning and its actual occurrence. One. Then the next.
