A review by correy_baldwin
The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro

4.0

4 ½ stars. My first full Alice Munro collection (which I began, strangely, a week or so before she died). The first thing that struck me was how real her characters feel, and how immediately they do so – you feel like you know who they are within a paragraph or two. And her stories are often populated with peripheral characters in a way that feels true to life, and which would feel crowded and clumsy in any other hand, but which allows Munro to simply add layers of meaning, to fill out and complicate the lives of her characters. This is such effortless and natural writing. She is also able to capture and explore the subtle differences in class and upbringing like almost no one else. Munro’s writing feels utterly free of cliché and artifice, and judgement.

Her stories are also almost entirely (and refreshingly) free of a traditional story arc: we are not even witnessing a slight shift in a character’s outlook so much as observing them at a point in their life when a shift is happening. We float in, and then float out. This is almost always impressive and effective – the fact that the stories hold together is a sign of true artistry – though at times things can feel driftless, meandering, even incomplete. Most of the stories were simply masterful; a handful of others less so. I suspect, given the overwhelming admiration for her, and her obvious talent and craft, this may not be considered her strongest collection. Still, what impressive writing.