Finally...

After years of being told that Alice Munro is the master of women’s short fiction, I finally delved into her latest short story collection, Runaway. There is something eerie and unsettling about each of these stories; there is an element that at once drew me in and made me want to turn away. As I proceeded through each tale I found myself not particularly enamored by any of the main characters, but almost reluctantly identifying with their thoughts and observations and self-serving actions. I don’t know if it is the rural Canadian setting that makes the stories seem stark or the mood and emotion of the people they are about These characters are all women at various stages of life: one trying to escape a disappointing marital relationship, one returning to her childhood home with her infant daughter for a visit with her aging parents, one trying to understand the disappearance of her young adult daughter, one who spends the day with her fiancé’s alcoholic brother who ultimately takes her home and continues on to commit suicide by driving his car into a bridge abutment. There are others: a child, an old woman. Each story is clear, vivid, deep, and complicated….I am haunted by this book. I see bits of these stories in my mind even now, days after completing it. And there are moments in those reflections that I feel the need to revisit the story to see if I understood it correctly. Not many authors evoke that kind of response from me. This writing is powerful and compelling. The “master?” I guess so.