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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780679766742
ISBN number: 067976674X
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 688
Printing Date: November 11, 1997
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: November 11, 1997
Sale Popularity Level: 159855
Studio: Vintage
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Spanning almost thirty years and settings that range from big cities to small towns and farmsteads of rural Canada, this magnificent collection brings together twenty-eight stories by a writer of unparalleled wit, generosity, and emotional power. In her Selected Stories, Alice Munro makes lives that seem small unfold until they are revealed to be as spacious as prairies and locates the moments of love and betrayal, desire and forgiveness, that change those lives forever. To read these stories--about a traveling salesman and his children on an impromptu journey; an abandoned woman choosing between seduction and solitude--is to succumb to the spell of a writer who enchants her readers utterly even as she restores them to their truest selves.
Amazon.com Review:
'Too many things,' a creative writing instructor tells the narrator of 'Differently.' 'Too many things going on at the same time; also too many people. Think, he told her. What is the important thing? What do you want us to pay attention to? Think.' What does Alice Munro want us to pay attention to in her Selected Stories? Everything, really, and so her narratives loop back on themselves, jump decades backward and forward in time, introduce characters who later drop out of the action, and generally break every rule in the short-story-writing book. In 'Carried Away,' for instance, a dead character makes a sudden, inexplicable appearance in what is otherwise the thoroughly naturalistic account of a librarian's disappointment with love. 'The Albanian Virgin' is two stories in one: the first--the fanciful tale of Ghegs kidnapping a young Canadian woman--is told within the second, about a bookstore owner who has lost her own bearings after a divorce. There are stories that begin with their endings, and several more that end with beginnings; others are told from three or four different angles, each with varying degrees of reliability. Taken together, they form an intricate web of relationships and connections, falsehood and anecdote, a kind of fictional palimpsest laid over the faint traces of plot.
And yet Munro trusts her readers; she believes that we will pay attention to all these things and more. She aims to create the illusion that everything in her fiction has been left in, and it is this very capaciousness that sets her work apart, making possible the keen psychological insight of her stories about marriage as well as the cool violence of 'Vandals' or 'Fits.' Hers is an unusual sort of realism, technically innovative and amenable--especially in the later work--to loose ends. (It also possesses a quick, flinty wit: 'This was the very first time I understood how God could become a real opponent, not just some kind of nuisance or large decoration,' says the narrator of 'The Progress of Love.') To call Munro the Canadian Chekhov is by now a commonplace--and yet she may have done more for the short fiction form than any writer since. These are stories that will be read, savored, and admired hundreds of years from now. --Mary Park
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Rated by buyers 
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Alice Munro is among the few great writers who have chosen the story (short and long) for her/his primary genre of expression. Almost every one of the stories in this collection is as rich and rewarding as a novel of 400 pages by a lesser artist. I give the collection 4 stars rather than 5 because I firmly believe that each of the selected stories was richer and more satisfying in its original context,i.e. in the volume in which it was very first published. The Beggar Maid, for instance, one of Munro's earlier storybooks, lists ten titles. Each of the tales, to my mind, is analogous to a subplot in a sprawling novel, but clarified and intensified by isolation. No awkward transitions, no fillers! The whole is definitely more than the sum of the parts. Read one of the storybooks first, before you accept some editor's cherry-picking. If you've never read Munro, start with The Moons of Jupiter. You have a lot of reading thrills to look forward to.
Rated by buyers 
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I am a big Alice Munro fan--I have probably read through this book 3 times. My favorite stories are The Progress of Love, Royal Beatings, the Albanian Virgin, and especially Friend of My Youth. Not all the stories are very first rate. There are definitely some duds--like "Labor Day Dinner"; man do I HATE that story. I read it in an anthology in college and I wish she would have left it out of this book. It is like the one grey mark on her otherwise distinguished career-- Pretentious style, dialogue that doesn't ring true, too many characters for a short story. Still, no one writes about family dynamics like Alice Munro. Her stories always make me reflect back on my own family. I also recommend "Hateship, Friendship"... and any of her earlier collections. "Runaway" and "Love of a Good Woman" aren't worth your time.
Rated by buyers -
Alice Munro gives us a quick and sometimes fleeting glimpse into the inner workings of the stories' characters and lives. This is one of the most literary short-story collections I've ever read. All of the stories in this collection are powerful and intense. Munro has the ability to add tremendous depth in a short story. It isn't easy to have precise characterization and story development in short stories, but Munro does a brilliant work in creating memorable characters and compelling tale in just a few pages. I can't recommend this wonderful collection enough.
Rated by buyers -
Alice Munro is rightfully considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the English-speaking world. Certainly a story like "The Progress of Love," in this volume--a rich, poignantly ironic delineation of the selectivity of memory--is proof enough that Munro is as great as her reputation would have it, and that she is one of the few living writers who deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Chekhov. Nevertheless, plowing through her Selected Stories is like gorging on a box of chocolates; you'd be a lot better off savoring just one or two at a time. The maiin problem is that Munro's subject range is narrow. How many stories can you read in one sitting about women from impoverished small-town Ontario, who are misunderstood and often brutalized by their families, boyfriends and husbands? (The reviewers who called Munro's women weak are misreading the stories severely; these women could have hauled the wounded Titanic to port, 2,000 passengers and all, single-handedly. They have the clemency of the very strong, which unfortunately means that weaker, more spiteful souls can walk all over them.) Yet within each story, Munro's elegant, lucid prose style and encyclopedic knowledge of the human mind and heart make themselves felt. I will reread stories such as "Material," "Chaddeleys and Flemings," "Dulse," "The Turkey Season" and "The Beggar Maid" with joy and admiration for their perfect artistry. But I'll have to wait to reread stories such as "Labor Day Dinner," which after an unrelieved diet of Munro stories can almost seem like a parody of the author. Do yourself a favor; buy this wonderful book, but savor its delights sparingly, as you would a box of Godivas.
Rated by buyers 
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The short stories that were written in this book were very detailed and had excellent style and really kept the reader entranced. The only problem was that each story seemed to be about the same weak female characters.. it was just a different setting for each story. I definitely like how Alice Munro writes about women though, and I'm going to read some of her other works to compare them, and maybe see exactly where she is coming from.
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