Who Do You Think You Are

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    First published in Viking by Macmillan of Canada Limited, 1978, a division of Canada Publishing Corporation
    Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1991, 1996
    Published in this edition, 2006
    (WEB) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
    Copyright © Alice Munro, 1978
    Introduction copyright © Wayne Johnston, 2006
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    Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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    ISBN-10: 0-14-305495-3
    ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305495-5
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To G. Fn.

Acknowledgments
    Some of these stories have been published previously:
    “Privilege” in Ms., September 1978 (under the title “The Honeyman’s Daughter”);
    “Spelling” in Weekend, June 1978;
    “Half a Grapefruit” in Redbook, May 1978;
    “Mischief” in Viva, April 1978;
    “Wild Swans” in Toronto Life, March 1978;
    “Providence” in Redbook, August 1977;
    “The Beggar Maid” in The New Yorker, June 1977; and
    “Royal Beatings” in The New Yorker, March 1977.

Introduction
by Wayne Johnston
    I was in university when I first read the short story “Half a Grapefruit,” which is, in a strange way, one of my favourite Alice Munro stories. Or perhaps I should say that it contains one of my favourite Alice Munro moments.
    For months after reading the collection of linked stories called Who Do You Think You Are?, and especially the story “Half a Grapefruit,” I was hyper-self-conscious. I repeated the title as a kind of mantra of self-censorship. I frequently found myself about to say something, only to have the words “half a grapefruit” pop up in my mind, a dam against whatever I had been about to blurt out which I would then inwardly re-examine to determine what the consequences might be for me of speaking my mind. Half a grapefruit, half a grapefruit.
    Anything that could pass what I called the grapefruit test was safe to say out loud. Anything that in my head sounded like something that would be scorned in the fictional town of Hanratty I kept to myself. Friends noticed that I was slow in responding to questions, more reticent than usual in conversation, forever hanging fire instead of spewing out in my customary manner what I thought, and assumed other people thought, were euphemisms.
    I guessed that I had