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A review by jamichalski
Runaway by Alice Munro
5.0
I don’t think it’s an overreaction to say Alice Munro is one of the greatest short story writers I’ve ever read. Almost every story in this collection ranks among the greatest short stories I’ve ever read (Chance; Soon; Silence; Trespasses; Passion; Tricks; Powers). The only one I didn’t care a whole lot for was the title story, Runaway. Munro is a master of the medium.
The stories in this collection are about the lives and relationships of lower/middle-class Canadian women. The relationships are about lovers, companions, friends, husbands/wives, mentors/mentees, mothers/fathers/children; common themes are independence, fear, loneliness, social/cultural constraints on women, how people change, and how they really don’t change at all. They are not very optimistic stories, in general. People fall into the same old self-defeating patterns, people are abandoned, they age, they divorce, they miss opportunities, etc.
Memory and time’s passing are two themes coursing through the best of these stories. Munro likes to build up characters at young ages and then quickly jump forward decades in their lives. We first see them young and vitalized, swept up in dramas of youth (money, marriage, status, possessions). Then, we see them much later, with so many hopes disappointed and dreams unfulfilled. The reader is left with an aching for these characters’ lost potential selves, futures that never arrived, roads once open and now closed off forever. These themes are extremely potent and universal and I’m honestly surprised more writers don’t focus on them. Who among us does not mourn for that which never came about? I know at times I feel really bereaved for the missed potentialities of my life, for the chances at relationships with other people and places that never happened and never will, that now exist only in my memory. It’s a lonely, bitter thing.
I’m totally awed by Munro’s stories: carefully composed, utterly human, always relevant. She’s worth reading, I promise.
A great quote from Powers: “Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste out powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing the things we should have, or would have, liked to do?”
The stories in this collection are about the lives and relationships of lower/middle-class Canadian women. The relationships are about lovers, companions, friends, husbands/wives, mentors/mentees, mothers/fathers/children; common themes are independence, fear, loneliness, social/cultural constraints on women, how people change, and how they really don’t change at all. They are not very optimistic stories, in general. People fall into the same old self-defeating patterns, people are abandoned, they age, they divorce, they miss opportunities, etc.
Memory and time’s passing are two themes coursing through the best of these stories. Munro likes to build up characters at young ages and then quickly jump forward decades in their lives. We first see them young and vitalized, swept up in dramas of youth (money, marriage, status, possessions). Then, we see them much later, with so many hopes disappointed and dreams unfulfilled. The reader is left with an aching for these characters’ lost potential selves, futures that never arrived, roads once open and now closed off forever. These themes are extremely potent and universal and I’m honestly surprised more writers don’t focus on them. Who among us does not mourn for that which never came about? I know at times I feel really bereaved for the missed potentialities of my life, for the chances at relationships with other people and places that never happened and never will, that now exist only in my memory. It’s a lonely, bitter thing.
I’m totally awed by Munro’s stories: carefully composed, utterly human, always relevant. She’s worth reading, I promise.
A great quote from Powers: “Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste out powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing the things we should have, or would have, liked to do?”