A review by zmoats
Dear Life by Alice Munro

4.0

Alice Munro's collection of short stories weaves a small thread through each from start to finish. Characters are not carried over from story to story, but themes are. Those themes and Munro's musings on them are what I walked away from the book with. There are a few stories in the collection that I didn't care too much for (one being the very first one, so tough that out if you don't enjoy it), but I did take something from each. There are three or four stories in the middle section of the book that I found myself wanting to reread as soon as I finished them. One of the most interesting aspects of Munro's writing was her knack for ending a story with almost no resolution (to be clear, this is not every story, I just noticed it in a few). In a sense, she does mimic life in these instances, it is not always clean and tidy, sometimes its just ugly and rough. Yet within that ugliness, there is something. Something that all makes it worth it. I think that Munro explores that well within the confines of these short stories.