Book

Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Runaway, Dear Life

Robert Thacker (editor)

A critical study in the Bloomsbury Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction series offering nine original essays by leading scholars analyzing three key story collections by Alice Munro published since 1990, with focus on her late narrative art and thematic preoccupations.

Sequence ladder

Narrative Intelligence sources live outside the figurative image sequence ladder. Adaptive placement applies to image sequences, not this reading library.

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Contextresearch_analysis

What this book knows

Munro's fiction knows that intimacy both protects and ensnares the self, making even ordinary life a site of radical exposure.

Sex: Present
Work: Present
Learning: Present
Religion: Absent

intimacyself-and-identitydesire

intimacy

intimacy is either used or refused by the narrator to locate and protect her rich imaginative life, her personal freedom, and her 'dear life' from the clutches of conventionality
AMHF-RC-182
intimacy generates the very boundaries of identification by which we even determine those spheres
AMHF-RC-183
the name 'Fiona' refers not merely to a person but to a whole set of concerns: not only a marriage, but also the love, trust, and support that the marriage involves
AMHF-RC-075

self-and-identity

'whatever special experience was owing to myself': 'I did not dream of calling anybody else's attention to what was there, because it was not meant for them'
AMHF-RC-186
'something was taking hold of me': the inside of the rooms remained 'more strange' to her despite objects with childhood stories attached
AMHF-RC-193

desire

'I could not stand for there to be an end of you and me'—the sincerity of this speech is undermined by later events
AMHF-RC-173

Illuminates

6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis

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