Alice Munro: A Literary Companion

Alice Munro, the woman's literary voice, solved one of the conundrums of science--how to quantify what happens in human interaction. Because there are no graphs or pie charts specifying proportions, she wrote fourteen collections of stories and stand-alone narratives, a wealth of fiction based on matter-of-fact observation and evaluation of unfathomable consequences. To get to the core of the matter, she relied on simplicity and a lack of affectation. This book simplifies for readers, teachers, librarians, journalists, and feminists the one hundred eighty-eight works of a Canadian prodigy, a massive body of prose daunting for one person to scrutinize. One hundred A-to-Z topics survey twenty-five story collections and the author's book introductions and essays. Generous commentary by literary critics and journalists listed with affiliations offer a range of opinions about Alice's style and subject matter. Entries highlight the intangibles--parenting, achievers, sex, women, feminism, coming of age--alongside historical themes of World War II, health, religion, and Ontario. This first of its kind companion endeavors to be the most complete treatment of the Canadian writer to date.