Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
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REVIEW BY BONNIE ERTELT
In her new book of short stories, author Alice Munro takes writing what you know to new levels. With keen attention to detail, the Canadian mistress of the short story often sets her narratives in rural Ontario and British Columbia, the places where she has spent most of her life. Perhaps the intimacy that is common in small towns makes it easy for her to imagine the fully realized characters that appear in her new book Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. One gets the feeling that Munro comprehends her fictional creations so well that she knows exactly what they'll eat for breakfast in the morning -- even if it's not a part of the story. In this, her 10th volume of short stories, Munro once again draws vivid portraits of the young and old, the rich and poor, some made cynical by love, and some surprised by it. All of her characters serve to illuminate the truth, which can only be pieced together from their collective points of view. An old maid housekeeper finds marital happiness via the prank of two teenage girls. A woman remembering a long-ago fling with a stranger realizes that the memory has changed over time, nonetheless sustaining her throughout her happy and lifelong marriage to her husband. A philanderer's wife teaches him a few things about cheating after he moves her into a nursing home. In each story, tables are turned, and characters never know all that has worked in their favor or against them. Only the author and the reader are privy to the information. Munro has said that in our own lives, by middle age, "we can't really hang on to our [self-made] fictions anymore," that we are constantly at work on the "novel" of our lives. It seems that Munro's characters are at work on their own fictions, the "novels" of their lives rendered for us in short story form. How nice that Munro serves as their recording secretary, competently and creatively shaping their stories and sharing them with the rest of us. Bonnie Arant Ertelt is a writer and editor in Nashville.
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