Reading Alice Munro's Breakthrough Books: A Suite in Four Voices

What in terms of Alice Munro’s creative artistry and creative power allowed her to become the first and only short story writer, the first and only Canadian, and just the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? And exactly when during Munro’s career did her artistry and power advance to ensure that she would earn such world-wide renown? The answers lie in studying the boldly innovative yet greatly under-examined group of her four mid-career breakthrough books. Our volume therefore provides a carefully orchestrated analysis of Munro’s subtle yet potent handling of form, technique and style both within individual stories and across these special collections. Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books: A Suite in Four Voices not only addresses a significant vacancy in Munro criticism – and, by extension, in all short story criticism – but, equally importantly, offers an exciting new model for how criticism can be collectively written. Cover Introduction: Catch and Release – Alice Munro and ‘the human palimpsest’ Half Title Title Page Copyright Contents Contributor Biographies Acknowledgements Dedication Seeing in Circles: The Fierce Originality of The Progress of Love (1986) 1. Welcome to My House! 2. Epic Inclusiveness in ‘The Progress of Love’ 3. Verbal Play in ‘Lichen’ 4. Ways of Knowing and Ways of Being in ‘Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux’ 5. Did You Enjoy Your Visit? ‘The Old Order Changeth’: Change, Renovation and Modernity in Friend of My Youth (1990) 1. Looking Through Binoculars: The Short Story Genre and Moments of Change 2. Textual Instability in ‘Differently’ 3. Approaching the First Three Stories 4. The Coda: ‘Wigtime’ 5. Reading Across a Short Story Collection The Art of Misreading; or, The Driving Force of Misunderstanding: Open Secrets (1994) 1. Introducing a Dark Collection 2. ‘Open Secrets’: Death by Landscape 3. Approaching the First Three Stories 4. ‘Vandals’ as Coda: On (Not) Reading Signs 5. The Art of Misreading Rereading The Love of a Good Woman (1998) 1. Introduction: ‘An Extra Dimension to Life’ 2. ‘The Love of a Good Woman’: ‘The Book Had Just Shifted This Much’ 3. ‘Jakarta’: ‘A Place of Their Own’ 4. ‘Cortes Island’: Sources and Transformations 5. What Ordinary Readers Say about Reading The Love of a Good Woman Works Consulted Index of Stories and Story Collections General Index