Promotional Information

In this perfect new collection, each of Alice Munro's glorious stories is as satisfying and richly crafted as a novel.

About the Author

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature** Alice Munro was born in 1931 and is the author of thirteen collections of stories, most recently Dear Life, and a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She has received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Beggar Maid, and has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives with her husband in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron in Canada.

Reviews

"Another breathtaking demonstration of her mastery of the short story... No one could possibly dispute Munro's greatness; the genius of her seamless, unmatchable prose which nets up the flow of everyday life so miraculously" Daily Mail "Munro gives each of her stories the rich density of a compacted novel...The distinctive vitality of her stories come from their imaginative limberness...triumphantly displays impressive feats of flexibility, always gracefully adapted to life's twists and turns" Sunday Times "Munro is an artist of the domestic interior... She stands at an angle to the mass of her contemporaries set aside both by the beauty of her prose and by the calm intensity of her engagement with her material" Evening Standard "The nine stories in this collection have the kind of spaciousness, the attention to detail, that one expects from lengthier fiction... There is a core of mystery in every Munro story, and that is why re-reading them is such a continuous pleasure" Independent "Each of her tales contains the depth and scope of a novel...these melancholy, autumnal tales of small-town Canadian life demonstrate the gentle power of the short story at its best" New Statesman

Each of these nine stories is at once poignant, harsh, funny, melancholy, ironic, and dramatic, descriptions that in the end fall short of bringing their true flavor home. Munro is a lion of Canadian literature, often setting her tales in Ontario and British Columbia, where she lives, but the themes are universal and the characters Everyperson. The Bohemian aunt, the suicide with ALS, the terminally ill woman who is not so sure a new and hopeful diagnosis is welcome, the adulterer, the abandoned lover, the infatuated, the lonely, the bewildered, the old and young, all find a place in these complex works. The program is very well read by Kymberly Dakin in the perfect light and somewhat wistful voice. More of a break between stories would be helpful perhaps even the usually irritating musical interlude. Munro should be represented in all but the most superficial collections, and this audiobook would be an excellent addition to any library. Harriet Edwards, East Meadow P.L., NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.