Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Exploring the unpredictable ways in which people accommodate what happens in their lives

Image | BOOK COVER: Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Brilliantly paced, lit with sparks of danger and underlying menace, these are dazzling, provocative stories about Svengali men and the radical women who outmanoeuvre them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments that change or haunt a life. Alice Munro takes on complex, even harrowing emotions and events, and renders them into stories that surprise, amaze and shed light on the unpredictable ways we accommodate what happens in our lives.
Munro's unsettling stories turn lives into art, and expand our world and our understanding of the strange workings of the human heart.
(From Penguin Canada)
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.
Read an excerpt | Author interviews

From the book

I began to understand that there were certain talkers — certain girls — whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure. There might be other people — people like me — who didn't concede this, but that was their loss. And people like me would never be the audience these girls were after, anyway.

From Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro ©2009. Published by Penguin Canada.

Author interviews

Media Video | (not specified) : Alice Munro on Nobel win

Caption: Interview with Canada's 1st woman winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

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Media Audio | Archives : Alice Munro talks about her rural roots in 1974

Caption: The Ontario-born author talks to broadcaster Harry Boyle about her memories of a small-town childhood. Aired Aug. 18, 1974 on CBC Radio's Sunday Suppplement. Credit: Something I've been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro, Penguin Canada

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