Costco Connection - November 2005

book
pick

Lives in short

Alice Munro’s new short-story collection

illuminates the radiance of everyday life

By Ellen Schwartz

IN ALICE MUNRO’S 1971 novel, Lives of Girls and The Atlantic and The Paris Review.

Women, a character named Del Jordon is writing a Falling in and out of love, coping with loss, expe-story about life in small-town Ontario. Del describes riencing moments of quiet elation, rebelling against her determination to capture not only the facts of her the provincialism of one’s upbringing—this is the characters’ lives but the truth as well: “What I wanted stuff of Munro’s tales. In many of the stories, charac-was every last thing, every layer of speech and ters gradually let go of their expectations of life; they thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, come to accept what they’re given. every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delu- “Maybe that’s natural as one gets sion, held still and held together—radi- older,” Munro says. “I see people ‘going ant, everlasting.” on.’ Perhaps they’re living with things— It is those radiant, everlasting grief or loss or failure—that they moments—the stuff of ordinary life, once thought unacceptable, but they’re crystallized, illuminated, infused with still content.” meaning—that define an Alice Munro Some stories are triggered by a story. The Canadian author, whose memory or an anecdote, but more eighth short-story collection, Runaway, often they start with a feeling that is garnered Canada’s 2004 Governor Gen- rooted in a place. “Then I put people in eral’s Award, is known for her ability to it, and then add details. I don’t know capture human experience in elegant what the central theme is as I’m writing yet understated prose. the first draft; I figure it out as I write.

Pen_pni_ıe_c’s _k

Pennie Clark Ianniciello Costco Book Buyer

FRANCE FREEMAN

DEREK SHAPTON

How does she do it? How is she able Alice Munro The meaning or focus gets clearer to encapsulate a life in a page, to reveal between the first and second drafts.” deeply held emotion in a gesture, to convey what she An example is the story “Passion” in Runaway. calls the “shameless, marvelous, shattering absur- “A friend told me about when he’d badly cut his foot dity” of life? and had it stitched up by a doctor who was a recov-

Well, it helps to have grown up on a farm in ering alcoholic. That was the starting point. Initially rural Ontario, she tells The Connection in a recent I thought it was like a story of sexual attraction, but interview. “Isolation leaves plenty of room for imag- it turned into something entirely different: the story ining and reading. Plus I had a long walk to school, of the doctor’s despair.” In the final version, the only so I made up stories along the way.” element that remained from the original anecdote

A precocious reader, Munro read Charles wastheinjuredfoot.

Dickens’ A Child’s History of England at the age of 7. Munro’s characters are fully human, with all She also devoured the novels of Lucy Maud their foibles and complexities.“People are so com-Montgomery, especially Emily of New Moon, whose plicated, and that’s what fascinates me,” she says. aspiring-writer heroine served as inspiration for so “I’m interested in characters who are unpredictable, many budding authors. who feel conflicted about what they will do next.”

Munro began writing in her teens and pub- So what will Alice Munro do next? “I have no lished her first story in 1950 while attending univer- idea,” she says. “I have ideas, but I don’t know if I’ll sity. After a hiatus to marry and raise three children, resist them.” she released her first collection of stories, Dance of And then she laughs. C the Happy Shades, in 1968. Since then she has published one novel and seven more story collections, Ellen Schwartz is the author of nine books for and her stories regularly appear in The New Yorker, children. She lives in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Signed book

number on a post- No purchase is necessary.

giveaway card or letter and Entries must be received send it to: Alice or postmarked by midnight, COSTCO HAS 10 signed Munro, December 1, 2005. Void copies of Runaway, by The Costco where prohibited. Employ- Alice Munro, to give away. Connection, ees of Costco and their fami-

To enter, print your P.O. Box 34088, lies are not eligible. Winners name, membership number, Seattle, WA 98124-1088, or will be notified by mail. address and daytime phone fax it to (425) 313-6718. One entry per household.

WHAT CAN I SAY about Alice Munro that hasn’t been said? She’s an amazing author. This month’s Book Pick, Runaway, a collection of short stories, is no exception.

I recently read an interview posted at

www.randomhouse.com

in which Munro was asked how she is able to create an entire life in a page. She replied, “I always have to know my characters in a lot of depth.… I know what happened before and what will happen after the part of their lives I'm dealing with. I can't see them just now, packed into the stress of the moment. So I suppose I want to give as much of them as I can.”

It is obvious the author knows her characters because readers will come away from this book feeling they know each of them as well. In these stories Munro captures a realness that would take other authors an entire novel to create.