On the list of 10 Perfect Alice Munro sentences, recently selected by CBC, this is the first: "Every year, when you’re a child, you become a different person." It begs the question, "When does one stop becoming somebody new every year?" Perhaps after an event like the incident described in this
Unsurprisingly, “Some Women” offers readers a panoply of images of womanhood. It begins by hearkening back to an earlier time, when “girls wore waist cinches and crinolines that could stand up by themselves”. But then locates the narrator as being so old that even she is amazed by the number
"You think that would have changed things?" "The answer is of course, and for a while, and never." In interview with Eleanor Wachtel, Nick Hornby discusses the "problem of being divided being two worlds" saying that many of us have a version of this in our own lives. This is true
As one of the shorter stories in this volume, I was inclined, at first pass, to presume it was a simpler story. Its ending seemed to underscore this impression. Without going into detail, the story has the kind of resolution which could serve as the sole focus of discussion, in terms
So many of the risks in "Deep-Holes" are either averted or declared meaningless. "Sally packed devilled eggs—something she hated to take on a picnic, because they were so messy." Nobody ate the devilled eggs anyway, so it didn't matter how messy they were. "Ham sandwiches, crab salad, lemon tarts—also a
