Reviews

The Progress of Love by Alice Munro

forgereads17's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

fyodoralekseyev's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I won't rate this because I think I am too stupid for this. The writing was absolutely beautiful, and vivid images were made in my mind without even noticing, and every character felt real. The only wrinkle is that the plots were all nonsense; nothing happened in any of them. We drop into some random family's life, some people talk, and we get a flashback: story over! I suppose it is a bit too realistic for life to actually be highly mundane. Maybe after reading more literature like this the stories will click better. 

On a more whimsical note, has Munro ever met an old couple whose been together through the ages? Everyone is separated/divorced in these stories. Wild.

laila4343's review against another edition

4.0

Alice Munro is exquisite. My favorite stories were the title story, Lichen, and White Dump. But a very good collection overall. It took quite a while for me to read, because each story had so much emotional heft that I couldn't plow into the next one right away.

miss_blackbird's review against another edition

4.0

Kleine verhalen. Langzaam ontluikende verhalen. Ze laat het alledaagse, het gewone, onalledaags worden. Ze laat zien dat het gewone leven episch kwaliteiten heeft. Op een simpele, in het geheel niet pretentieuze of bombastische, manier. Gewoon, omdat het zo is.

rochelles_reading_journal's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

larryerick's review against another edition

3.0

I tried earlier to read this author's first short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, and could find neither content nor style to keep me engaged. This collection was published about 18 years later and shows remarkable leaps to the skills I would hope all Nobel Prize winners in Literature would have. The author constantly shows remarkable insight into her characters and nuances in their situations that most other writers never approach. Have you ever had a situation where a parent or teacher or other key person made remarks to you and others in a group, seemingly not talking to you anymore directly than to the others, but in which you knew unquestionably that the person was relating a message intended specifically for your edification? They knew something you had done or were contemplating doing or had experienced, and they were masking their lecture to you in the form of a general group message. They knew. And they wanted you to know that they knew. But without ever letting anybody else know. The first story in this collection hit me hard in just that way. The author said she knew something significant about me -- in detail -- without ever using my name or town or anything connected to me in that way. Unfortunately, about half-way through the collection, it seemed she was talking intimately to other readers and my level of interest dissipated somewhat. That's okay. I suspect she'll have another message just for me in another collection and I'll be ready to absorb every word.

zoekyriacou's review against another edition

4.0

I do love a short story and this is one of the best collections I’ve read :)) Only downside is because of the similar geographic location and writing style took me a bit longer to finish- no bad thing when wanting to appreciate each story for itself but I have a bad habit of wanting to blitz through!

bellygames's review against another edition

5.0

A very strong collection. Lichen and A Queer Streak were my favorite.

andrejagibese's review against another edition

3.0

we read this collection for book club. April was a crazy month for me so I only reads a handful of the stories but enough that I want to continue reading later. She has a very nostalgic voice. Many of her stories run together sharing the disappointments of being a housewife/mother in mid-twentieth century rural Canada. Read Miles City, Montana if you're a mom or have ever been in charge of children. That story in particular really echoes the fears I had being a nanny-- when these little people put all their faith in you to keep them safe...

vlzq's review against another edition

2.0

God I really wanted to like this book but I just found it so boring. I think I read another review saying that it’s definitely a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation and that’s probably the case with me. I think the book was really beautifully written and the characters were really fleshed out. It felt like each story had so much more depth to them than what we could read and it did feel like small excerpts of very developed stories. I enjoyed the first few stories but by the time I got closer to the end I felt so bored. I guess I just didn’t know what the point of each story was. I get that sometimes the magic is in the banal moments of every day life but I just did not enjoy it in this book the way I did with say Stoner by John Williams for example. It was also kind of bleak and depressing. For a book about love, I found that there weren’t very many moments of tenderness. Just could not get on with it and I’m kind of relieved that it’s over.