
Reading Alice Munro's Breakthrough Books
A Suite in Four Voices
Edinburgh University Press
Published on 31. October 2024
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-3995-3452-9 (ISBN)
Description
What in terms of Alice Munro's creative artistry and creative power allowed her to become the first and only short story writer, the first and only Canadian, and just the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? And exactly when during Munro's career did her artistry and power advance to ensure that she would earn such world-wide renown? The answers lie in studying the boldly innovative yet greatly under-examined group of her four mid-career breakthrough books.?Our volume therefore provides a carefully orchestrated analysis of Munro's subtle yet potent handling of form, technique and style both within individual stories and across these special collections. Reading Alice Munro's Breakthrough Books: A Suite in Four Voices not only addresses a significant vacancy in Munro criticism - and, by extension, in all short story criticism - but, equally importantly, offers an exciting new model for how criticism can be collectively written.
Reviews / Votes
This book is a breakthrough in Munro critical scholarship. A collaboratively authored project by four Munro specialists, for the first time it foregrounds the Nobel Prize winner's four mid-career short story collections and her innovative reshaping of the genre. A revelatory reading of the multilayered narrative complexity which is Munro's distinctive signature. -- Coral Ann Howells, University of Reading / University of London The pleasure in these essays is that they are less essays than passionate engagements with Munro's words, sentences and punctuation. They do not ask of the stories What but, rather, How. Each essay on what is terra incognita leaves us gazing out, silent, as it were, upon a peak in Darien. These are by far the best illuminations of Munro's work yet written. -- John Metcalf, writer and fiction editor at Biblioasis Press Alice Munro is largely responsible for rescuing the short story from being overshadowed by the novel. The four critics here demonstrate how Munro moved from telling stories to creating complex explorations of reality as multilayers of memory and perspective. -- Charles E. May, California State University, Long Beach As Alice Munro's stories grew, and their plots enfolded, they rarely strayed from the southwest Ontario-"Munro Country"-of her birth. We accepted their authenticity, and suspected, but never confirmed, an autobiographical impulse. This meticulous and timely study lifts the folds and disentangles a distressed life from her consummate art. -- Clark Blaise The contributors to this book have done an incredible job in addressing Alice Munro's talent, her understanding of the short story as a window to life, ever expanding, ever progressing, in search of life and its own essence. I highly recommend that you read it. -- Maurice A. Lee, Director of the biennial International Conference on the Short Story in EnglishMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
442 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-3452-9 (9781399534529)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
J.R. (Tim) Struthers taught full-time at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, from 1985 until 2022. He has edited some thirty volumes of theory, criticism, autobiography, short stories and poetry, including the companion volumes Alice Munro Country and Alice Munro Everlasting (2020). Ailsa Cox is Emerita Professor of Short Fiction at Edge Hill University, UK. She is the author of Writing Short Stories (2005; 2nd ed., 2016) and Alice Munro (2004). Her own short fiction has appeared in journals including Katherine Mansfield Studies (2010, 2022). Corinne Bigot is Maitresse de Conferences of Postcolonial Literatures at Universite Toulouse Jean Jaures, France. She is the author of Alice Munro, les silences de la nouvelle (2014) and, with Catherine Lanone, Sunlight and Shadow, Past and Present: Alice Munro's Dance of the Happy Shades (2014). Catherine Sheldrick Ross was until her death Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. Her previous work included The Pleasures of Reading: A Booklover's Alphabet (2014) and Alice Munro: A Double Life (1992).
Author
Emerita Professor of Short FictionEdge Hill University
Maitresse de Conferences of Postcolonial LiteraturesUniversite Toulouse Jean Jaures
Emerita Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media StudiesUniversity of Western Ontario
Content
Introduction: Catch and Release - Alice Munro and 'the human palimpsest', Robert Thacker
Seeing in Circles: The Fierce Originality of The Pro?gress of Love (1986), J.R. (Tim) Struthers
1. Welcome to My House!
2. Epic Inclusiveness in 'The Progress of Love'
3. Verbal Play in 'Lichen'
4. Ways of Knowing and Ways of Being in 'Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux'
5. Did You Enjoy Your Visit?
'The Old Order Changeth': Change, Renovation and Modernity in Friend of My Youth (1990), Ailsa Cox
1. Looking Through Binoculars: The Short Story Genre and Moments of Change
2. Textual Instability in 'Differently'
3. Approaching the First Three Stories
4. The Coda: 'Wigtime'
5. Reading Across a Short Story Collection
The Art of Misreading; or, The Driving Force of Misunderstanding: Open Secrets (1994), Corinne Bigot
1. Introducing a Dark Collection
2. 'Open Secrets': Death by Landscape
3. Approaching the First Three Stories
4. 'Vandals' as Coda: On (Not) Reading Signs
5. The Art of Misreading
Rereading The Love of a Good Woman (1998), Catherine Sheldrick Ross
1. Introduction: 'An Extra Dimension to Life'
2. 'The Love of a Good Woman': 'The Book Had Just Shifted This Much'
3. 'Jakarta': 'A Place of Their Own'
4. 'Cortes Island': Sources and Transformations
5. What Ordinary Readers Say about Reading The Love of a Good Woman
Works Consulted
Index
Contributor Biographies
Acknowledgements
Seeing in Circles: The Fierce Originality of The Pro?gress of Love (1986), J.R. (Tim) Struthers
1. Welcome to My House!
2. Epic Inclusiveness in 'The Progress of Love'
3. Verbal Play in 'Lichen'
4. Ways of Knowing and Ways of Being in 'Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux'
5. Did You Enjoy Your Visit?
'The Old Order Changeth': Change, Renovation and Modernity in Friend of My Youth (1990), Ailsa Cox
1. Looking Through Binoculars: The Short Story Genre and Moments of Change
2. Textual Instability in 'Differently'
3. Approaching the First Three Stories
4. The Coda: 'Wigtime'
5. Reading Across a Short Story Collection
The Art of Misreading; or, The Driving Force of Misunderstanding: Open Secrets (1994), Corinne Bigot
1. Introducing a Dark Collection
2. 'Open Secrets': Death by Landscape
3. Approaching the First Three Stories
4. 'Vandals' as Coda: On (Not) Reading Signs
5. The Art of Misreading
Rereading The Love of a Good Woman (1998), Catherine Sheldrick Ross
1. Introduction: 'An Extra Dimension to Life'
2. 'The Love of a Good Woman': 'The Book Had Just Shifted This Much'
3. 'Jakarta': 'A Place of Their Own'
4. 'Cortes Island': Sources and Transformations
5. What Ordinary Readers Say about Reading The Love of a Good Woman
Works Consulted
Index
Contributor Biographies
Acknowledgements