Reading one short collection by Alice Munro per year, over the last two or three years has become akin to an annual date with the gracious lady from Ontario. Back in 2014, I read "Runaway" ( or rather listened ) on being introduced to her by a fellow reader, and since then I've been reading one Munro book per year - "Dance of the Happy Shades" ( December, 2015), "Lives of girls and women" ( December, 2016) and "Something I've been meaning to tell you" ( December, 2017) - and the last three were read in the sequence of their publication. As such 2018 was the year of the book in caption, my fifth Munro read. This book can possibly be grouped under the categories of both short stories and also a novel. All ten stories in this collection are centered around Rose, and her step mother, Flo. Rose's family is a poverty stricken one from Ontario, and she, as best as she could tries to breakaway from the bleakness that West Hanratty, Ontario burdens her with. She succeeds with many self-inflicted failures upon herself, and one can't get away from the notion that the ghosts of her roots are someway or the other to be blamed.
Rose wins a scholarship to the local University, where a rich man who is also an intellectual falls in love with her. They marry, they have a child together, they separate and go their own ways. Their daughter grows up, Rose's search for love and security makes her adventurous, restless and desperate. Rose tries many jobs. Flo grows old and becomes forgetful and difficult to live with. She is taken to a home for the aged, as she literally wastes away alone in her old house - which by that time has become an eye sore, in a neighbourhood which has changed over the years. No, these summaries don't serve as spoilers, for it is the close views for each of these episodes complimented by the visceral moods that enrich these stories - and these moods and views can only be grasped by reading the book.
It is a moot point as to how these stories, despite their continuous main characters don't somehow make the reader feel as if she is reading a novel. It could well be that the reader is so used to associating short stories with Munro, that she finds appropriating these stories to a novel, an exercise that she fights an inner revolt against. But there is also the feel that we have periodic close focus followed by a long absence, and then a close focus again on another period. And by its closure we don't know the fate of most of these characters - and hence we see "pieces of lives" of the main characters, without they quite composing a whole - not even where the main characters of Flo and Rose are concerned.
In conclusion, it is always a pleasure to return to Munro at the end of the year, akin to looking forward for a vacation at the end of a tiring year. Occasionally this pleasure falls during a family trip, and it is bliss.
Looking forward to my next blissful episode of Alice Munro in her own world in Ontario.
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