Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

story that ran in the
New Yorker
, where I was working), which documents the insane things that a character has done in his life in the hope of somehow crashing out of it. He does not know that he is doing these things, and does not ever manage to get out, because when it comes down to it he never really wants to. “I see this as a fairly normal state of mind,” her note read.
    Hawthorne paid special attention to the Juliet triptych, finding fault both with Juliet’s exchange with Don, the minister who visits her dying mother, and with the woman from the commune who gleefully informs Juliet that her daughter Penelope would not be contacting her. These scenes, Hawthorne wrote, “are so uncharacteristic of Munro as to make for almost painful reading.” Another such instance is the scene in which Eric’s body, found on a beach after he drowned in a storm, is ritualistically burnedby those who knew him. Juliet, Hawthorne concluded, “is always less than candid, but perhaps that’s the point: like all of us, she’s stuck with who she is.”
    Other reviewers of
Runaway
in Great Britain offered assessments that ring true. Mary Blanche Ridge in the
Tablet
commented that “some of the stories are almost unbearable to read. But all are redeemed by the wonderful writing: by the humour (even when it is black) with which many of them are imbued, and most of all by Munro’s own vigorous belief in the resilience of the human spirit.” Citing the passage describing Robin’s anticipation of her yearly trip to Stratford to see a Shakespearian play in “Tricks,” Oliver Herford in the
Times Literary Supplement
described it as being about “the value of art within a life.” This, he wrote, “is the best and most lasting reason to read Alice Munro: she can accommodate the reader’s desire temporarily to inhabit the world of the fiction and to feel that there is room to turn around there.” In the
Scottish Review of Books
, Karl Miller began his review by asserting that “two of Scotland’s most gifted writers, of all time, are born-and-bred Canadians – Alice Munro and Alistair MacLeod, now in their seventies.” In a thorough review that takes up Munro’s Scots heritage – and details her connections to James Hogg while tracing Scottish material in various stories – Miller treats
Runaway
within the contexts of the whole of her work. He notes too that Munro’s “complete stories are the one long story of her life, the one work of art.”
    Beyond reviews, there are the many ongoing recognitions that
Runaway
has brought Munro. She was named the Arts Person of the Year by the
Globe and Mail
. Besides another Giller Prize and a near-miss on a fourth Governor General’s Award,
Runaway
won the 2004 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Its citation, in part, summarized the effect
Runaway
has had: “Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Munro continues to define the short story for an international audience. Through her mastery, she creates fully realized worlds with astonishing economy. Hers is an art visible only in its effects, her prose never postures, her characters never speak for anyone but themselves.” In May 2005 Munro was recipient of the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia. In theUnited States,
Runaway
was among the Ten Best Books of 2004 selected by the
New York Times
, and there was even talk in
New York
magazine about “Alice Munro Mania” in New York. In Great Britain, renewed hope for a Booker was evident throughout the reviews of
Runaway
. In April 2005, Munro was among those
Time
magazine named to “The
Time
100: The World’s Most Influential People.” Writing once again in the vein that characterized her review of
Hateship
in the
Atlantic Monthly
, Mona Simpson held there that Munro’s “fiction admits readers to a more intimate knowledge and respect for what they already possess. [It] takes on huge swaths of time, with breathtaking skips and breaks and vision, while still writing about women, about Canadians, about the extraordinary nature of ordinary love.”

    For readers who have followed Munro through her career,
Runaway
offers special pleasures. “Soon,” the middle story in the
New Yorker’s
triptych, offers Juliet at her most assured, her most certain. In “Chance,” she had gone off on her own to British Columbia and, after her youthful chance meeting on the transcontinental train with Eric, a fisherman from Whale