My Best Stories by Alice Munro
CBC Books | Posted: March 2, 2017 7:17 PM | Last Updated: May 14
Alice Munro selects her favourite pieces for this collection of short stories
My Best Stories is a dazzling selection of stories — 17 favourites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. The stories are arranged in the order in which they were written, allowing even the most devoted Munro admirer to discover how her work developed. "Royal Beatings" shows us right away how far we are from the romantic world of happy endings. "The Albanian Virgin" smashes the idea that all of her stories are set in B.C. or in Ontario's "Alice Munro Country." "A Wilderness Station" breaks short story rules by transporting us back to the 1830s and then jumping forward more than a hundred years. And the final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," which was adapted into the film Away from Her, leads us far beyond the turkey-plucking world of young girls into unflinching old age.
Every story in this selection is superb. It is a book to read — and reread — very slowly, savouring each separate story. This collection of small masterpieces deserves a place in every book lover's home. (From Penguin Canada)
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Literary legend Alice Munro died on May 13, 2024 at the age of 92. The Canadian writer is revered worldwide as a master of the short story, with 14 acclaimed collections and a Nobel Prize — the 13th woman and second Canadian, after Saul Bellows, to ever receive that honour.
Munro's work has won two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, three Governor General's Literary Awards and the Man Booker International Prize. Her first book, Dance of the Happy Shades, was released in 1968, and she continued to write stories, often contributing to The New Yorker, until retiring in 2013. In books like Lives of Girls and Women, The Love of a Good Woman and Runaway, Munro captured the inner lives of men and women in rural Canada. Her work is inspired by her own upbringing in Wingham, Ont.
From the book
My mother prayed on her knees at midday, at night, and first thing in the morning. Every day opened up to her to have God's will done in it. Every night she totted up what she'd done and said and thought, to see how it squared with Him. That kind of life is dreary, people think, but they're missing the point. For one thing, such a life can never be boring. And nothing can happen to you that you can't make use of. Even if you're wracked by troubles, and sick and poor and ugly, you've got your soul to carry through life like a treasure on a platter.
From My Best Stories by Alice Munro ©2006. Published by Penguin Canada.