. Spinning .

I found myself, as always, reading through this one too quickly because it is the last story in the anthology.

Reading Munro is always a pleasure, always a learning process. In this story, a woman is helping her elderly father prepare for possible heart surgery–or death. Their relationship changes as she sees him through different eyes in their conversations, just as she sees herself in a different way.

There is an attempt on her part to understand both her father and her daughters. There is this unraveling of the past to in some way establish the present so that both her father and her understand how they've come to the point where they are. There is that often built-up resentment, distance between parent and child that comes from reluctance to reveal–something that Munro shows us starkly:

There is a tendency to concentrate on something that will take us away from what could be that conflict of emotions that results instead, in a conflict of emotions itself.

In the end, the daughter reaches out to her father, using his knowledge of astronomy and her own recent visit to the local planetarium where she sought to escape.

There is always something new to learn from Munro's indepth unrolling of character. She uses self-reflection–though the narrator or protagonist need not always be trusted–as well as dialogue and much intereaction of characters. She also employs imagery as a show of character. What someone is wearing, how their house is kept, the color of the walls, all these are not mere grounding of setting, but used skillfully to show one more facet of her characters, which to Munro, are the real point of story.

Munro sets the stage: an older couple, Mildred and Wilfred, entertaining visitors, his brother Albert, his wife and her sister, in their small home for the summer. Then she paints in the characters, Mildred and Wilfrid are large, robust people; his brother–whom he hasn't seen in thirty years–and his family are thin, quiet, the women are mouselike.

Against this delicate balance of family reunion that proves to show they have little in common, we get a taste of some small but acceptable flaws that Mildred sees in her husband. We see however that each, though married late in life, have led lives of relative flamboyance in contrast to brother Albert. She came to him fresh from the death of her lover, an elderly married man. He traveled and took jobs where he could, likes his buddies and drinking and slightly off-color jokes. The difference in the two families may have been formed in the way they grew up, yet we see a strong love in the relationship of Mildred and Wilfred that's absent in the others; a more natural, easy caring, a zest that feels the emotions of life.

There is a leit motif (I think) in the story that illustrates the division:
They had a kitchen not much wider than a hallway, a bahroom about the usual size, two bedrooms that were pretty well filled up when you got a double bed and a dresser into them, a living room where a large sofa sat five feet in front of a large television set, with a low table about the size of a coffin in between, and a small glassed-in porch. (p. 199)

"You could be standing on the step, Albert," said Mildred, with as much interest as she had energy for.
But Albert said, "We never had a step at the front door. We only opened it once that I can remember, and that for Mother's coffin. We put some chunks of wood down then, to make a temporary step." (p. 212)
The image of the coffin–and their mother had died within weeks of giving birth to Wilfred and he was farmed out to an aunt–serves two situations here. In the first instance, it is an acceptable large part of their living space. In the other, Albert rather coldly refers to his mother's coffin being taken out of the house.

There is also the underlying theme of physical size, Mildred and Wilfred being very large but happy in a small space and the shrunken and dry appearance of Albert, his wife and her sister. This emphasis that Munro places on size–including the landscape where the brothers were born–seems to echo the personalities of the characters. While Mildred and Wilfred have traveled and lived elsewhere, they seem to bring their live-life-to-the-fullest attitude wherever, and squeeze it into whatever space they find themselves in, At one point, Mildred is squished in the back seat of the car with the two skinny sisters on each side yet they both have their heads down in embroidery rather than looking around at the countryside. They don't even get out of the car to walk up to where Albert and Wilfred were born.

It's a wonderful little story about a simple visit, and Munro makes it powerful with character.

Two old friends meet, talk a bit about love and relationships and stories with twisted endings, and we go back to their last meeting of a few months' back.

At that time, they attended a conference and accepted a ride back home by a friend (Douglas) of the first person narrator. The narrator is recently divorced, her friend Julie is unhappy in her marriage. On the ride they tell stories of infidelity and surprise at how marriages exist. We sense something between the narrator and Douglas beyond friendship, and yet we see something else happening between Douglas and Julie.

Without bringing us back to the present meeting of the two women, Munro leaves us with the thoughts of the narrator riding home with Douglas and Julie:

And so Munro has put the twist of their story, mentioned in the opening conversation, at the beginning, or so it would seem. The narrator's view of the future would have been of the three of them together, while the reality is that Julie and Douglas have an affair.

I think what Munro establishes is the secrets, the desires, the uncontrollable emotions in reaction to one another of relationships. While the narrator has made the decision long ago to divorce her husband and make it on her own, she still has a hope for happiness that includes Douglas and her friendship with Julie. Even as the stories they tell each other reek of wonderment at the attraction that brings two people together, she is surprised by the way things turn out, as is Julie. Douglas simply follows his nose, which may be the answer, after all.

This is a very interesting look at two old women who find themselves in a nursing home. Munro carefully draws out the difference in their lives, though they had known each other in kindergarten, over eighty years ago, and likely grew apart and not seen each other much in the interim. Munro displays the difference in their appearance back then, and the husbands they chose, and even the gifts they've received from their children on view in their rooms. Lit-up plastic roses and crocheted dolls that are pincushions are in Mrs. Cross' room; books fill the shelves of Mrs. Kidd's.

While they seek each other out in their new restricted world of wheelchairs and very sick people, there is still within each a tendency to hold onto their own separate lives. When Mrs. Cross befriends a stroke-afflicted newspaper man, Mrs. Kidd sees much less of her, and eventually finds another patient-resident who is more easily manipulated. Mrs. Cross tries very hard to help the man to speak and communicate despite doctors' warnings and when he gets angry with her for her mothering and tutoring ways, she is flustered and weary. Mrs. Kidd notices that Mrs. Cross does not have her wheelchair (here's where I sort of felt Munro contrived the situation, in having Mrs. Cross say that she left it behind in helping the man to the recreation room) and Mrs. Kidd boldly offers her own chair to Mrs. Cross and pushes her all the way back to her room. With instructions to haul herself out of the chair and lay down on her bed and have the nurse return the chair to Mrs. Kidd's room later, Mrs. Cross disappears into her room and Mrs. Kidd, completely exhausted, sinks to the floor to recuperate.

Again, a beautiful look inside human nature, and yet this last detail spoiled it for me a bit (see previous story review): Why didn't Mrs. Kidd wait until Mrs. Cross had gotten into her bed and then wheel herself back in her chair? While I might understand the show of strength and sacrifice, this little detail seems to undermine the image of both women as quite practical and intelligent. There would have been little lost in having Mrs. Kidd take the chair right then, as Munro has already included the detail of Mrs. Kidd's labored breathing.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting too picky on some things; after all, I accept fiction as it happened that way–not my way. Munro so carefully uses details to define the real story that perhaps I'm just not good enough a reader yet to have understood the image.

This story, as do most of Munro's, focuses on how people interact, what part of their inner self they compromise or embellish in order to deal with life and the people in it.  There is usually, as is here, a conflict that unravels slowly through character revelation and interaction, specifically dialogue and reflections, and a resolution that often leaves the character changed only in their acceptance of a situation.

Here, we have a smoldering fight and unhappiness after a year of marriage when realities about one's partner sink in and are often resented. Munro shows us both sides of the situation and we find that they do love each other but that the veneer has worn off. We find the battle one of self-identity and change forced by becoming a partnership. As the ice thaws, one makes the effort to break through and the other accepts, but first considering choices that prepare for future scenarios.

But Munro's ending to this story has just a bit of dissatisfaction to it–not because of the ultimate changes made, the growth in the relationship–but rather the impetus and how it was handled. As they all drive home, and some peace is made, suddenly out of the dark a car comes straight at them, veering off into the cornfields just before they would otherwise impact.  They drive the short distance home and sit in the car in the driveway, likely stunned by the moment that could have ended their lives.

What spoiled it for me? Well I just don't buy that they didn't stop and check on the driver and passenger in the other car. This wouldn't seem realistic, especially since they live out in the country where other cars are not likely to be going by in any number. This sort of changed the image of the two characters that Munro so carefully built.

Again, Munro's just tops with creating a rounded character that evokes empathy. Here, a husband and wife (Roberta) are going to a friend's for dinner and they've been fighting for a couple days and are in the middle of a polite but cold war. Before they've left, George has told her "Your armpits are flabby," when she asked him why he didn't like what she'd planned to wear.

Munro gives us some of her thoughts:

The beauty here is the conflicting emotions. Roberta is well aware that she needn't try so hard to please him, that she needs to learn to be comfortable with herself and her own identity. She "must get away, live alone" she says.  And then adds, "wear sleeves." We know this feeling, we know that she's trapped.

While Alice Munro pins down her characters so well that they remain in the mind for a while as an acquaintance, this definitive description of a 12 year-old caught me by surprise:

Now this is typical Munro, describing character via the clothing. We can "see" Eva and get an idea of what sort of girl she is; flamboyant yet proper, a wild-looking outfit yet bridal, see-through yet she thinks to put on shorts beneath.  Munro then goes on to confirm our image:

This comes after the detailed descriptions of her parents and older sister. We somehow know that Eva is the character to watch.

Let's put aside the fact that I can relate to this story of love and infidelity far too easily. Munro is superb at getting inside the emotion of relationships by viewing them through a character that may or may not be honest with him/herself about it. After all, perspective and perception play the biggest roles in such things.

This, of course, is what Prue tells herself to justify her taking the cufflink. We suspect it is not quite as flippant a gesture as is suggested. But it tells us something about her that contrasts with her more cheerful and accepting outward appearance on relationships, and this one in particular. Though Gordon has indicated that some day he thinks he wants to marry her–the ex-wife being out of the picture by now–he also admits that he may be in love with the woman who has angrily interrupted their private dinner, and needs to get over her first. (Whatta guy!) They do not seem to reach a happy ending together, and Munro brings us back to this little detail of the stolen cufflink.

Munro cleverly lists all the things the cufflink does not symbolize or her reason for taking it. Yet, we've already gotten the idea that Prue isn't exactly what the world–or even she–sees her as being. We may think she's a fool for falling for a sap like Gordon, but she doesn't appear to feel that way and we cheer her on. The cufflink may be the one part of him that remains permanent for her. That is there between the visits. It may be something she takes for herself from the life he does not allow her to share. It may be a grounding, a nest. Or, more simply, and I suspect this from experience, a small way to inconvenience him (where does one go with a single cufflink?) that somehow balances out the inconvenience she so cheerfully accepts as part of this on again, off again relationship that he manages to control.

We may not know the reasoning behind Prue's actions, but we can't help but understand that she does what she does for her own peace of mind.

Another close writing from Munro–by close, I'm using the "close reading" application, the same attention to diction and use of writing tools such as dialogue and character reflection to give information that a lesser writer might merely present as backstory.

The first person narrator/protagonist is recalling a past love and we discern her depth of involvement by how rather than what she tells us in the story. She is open yet protective, calling him "X" and mentioning that the letter is indeed a part of his name as well as being "expansive and secretive." She is staying at the home of a friend named Kay who goes through the same problems in relationships, yet has her own way of accepting them so she can accept herself.

Here is where Munro sets up plot by using character interaction, a bit of episodic device that gives us an interesting look into the two women through the eyes of one. If we pay close attention, we don't see the end as contrived or a planned twist, but a wonderful head-nodding moment, the reader not being taken by surprise, but rather noting that Munro's foreshadowing was wonderfully skilled and yet natural.

This story, in the anthology "The Moons of Jupiter," is a peek into a woman's affair with a married man.  It follows a short time span when Ted's only son Bobby is killed in a snow sled accident, while rounding out the character of the protagonist, Frances, with her interactions with others and her own reflection on the man and the part of him that she, as mistress, is not privy to.

The sneaking around is a good part of the allure of the affair for Frances, though most of the town knows about it. When the accidental death of Ted's son brings together a situation where Ted is confronted by his boss, the high school principal, he makes the decision to leave his family, marry Frances, and leave town. Frances agrees.

Munro then brings us back to the small town, thirty years later, at a wake for the death of her sister-in-law. In the usual chatting and reuniting of old acquaintances, Frances, now married to Ted and a mother, looks closely at the twists and turns of their lives.

Frances realizes the paths that open by opportunity, sees the chain of events that lead us into unanticipated areas, and makes another important observation.

So Frances seems to think that one may change paths by choice or circumstance, and yet remain essentially the same, unaffected by the differences that come with change. Interesting. I wonder if the difference lies in the type of person; if the traveler be openminded and flexible, change would be inevitable, and I would see it as a form of growth of character. If one remains of steadfast opinion in the face of the new, applying what is known to understand and categorize the unknown, then perhaps the event is changed rather than the observer.

But I also see the above as the base of hypertext; the choices made by the characters are now extended to the reader via hypertext links. With my bit of dabbling in hypertext I find that I pick up on its implications and opportunities in reading static literature, observing just as I would find the awesome diction, the twist of plot. Jessica, a Tunxis New Media  student, is doing the same in watching movies.

A young girl, the first person narrator, goes to work at a turkey slaughter house where she hopes to overcome doubts about her capabilities. Munro then uses the character to discover the facts and faults of the workers around her via her observations. There are women who are married and bitter, a young pregnant girl, a foreman whom the narrator and others look up to and wonder about.

There are small intimacies in conversation that reveal the hopelessness of some workers against the hopeful dreams of the others as they interact within an environment that delineates a family-type work space while they share little of their more personal lives outside the turkey barn. Munro brings in some conflict via the foreman's young friend who is brash, sensual, and obnoxious and lazy. When he is finally fired, the women seem to form a new bond with each other under the spirit of the holiday season.

Munro is a master of character and there is enough in the action of the story to satisfy plot. Not great, but a good read.

Maybe I’m losing my perception. Maybe I’m just overdosed on reading. This story in Alice Munro’s anthology follows a woman on a brief vacation after her relationship falls apart. It is self analysis on her part, even as written in third person, as she seeks to understand her attraction to her former lover. She is staying at a small inn where she interacts with several very different types of men. In wondering how she would have responded to these men, she seeks to discover her self that she has somehow lost in her relationship with her former lover.

It’s sort of gone on and on and I don’t really see a real focused or empathetic character in Lydia. She is rude to an elderly gentleman who is obsessed with the persona of Willa Cather, to the point where she appears to purposely hurt his feelings. It is likely that human nature with its ego of self-preservation has led her to do this as part of her own healing process.

Munro is a great storyteller of character in ways that we can usually recognize ourselves and our own flaws as well as needs. This particular story, however, didn’t really have me hooked.

Munro for a rainy day. I learn so much from her.

She draws her characters out so carefully, each and every one.  Here, in the short story The Stone in the Field, we have a visit to the narrator’s father’s family home, where his five sisters still live on in an era bypassed by change. The aunts are all discomforted a bit by this visit interrupting their routine, and the narrator tries to remember a time earlier when they were more social and individual. Munro sketches their life through their surroundings, the spit-polished yet bare kitchen, their reticence at conversation, their ignorance of their furniture as "antiques," and their shy yet more human reaction to gentle teasing by their brother–the narrator’s father. 

Then Munro uses just a single incident from the past and a simple dialogue to enforce the passing of time and its effect on these sisters as a dramatic point:

He told me how he had left home. Actually there were two leave-takings. The first occurred the summer he was fourteen.  His father had sent him out to split some chunks of wood.  He broke the ax-handle, and his father cursed him out and went after him with a pitchfork. His father was know for temper, and hard work.  The sisters screamed, and my father, the fourteen year-old boy, took off down the lane running as hard as he could.
"Could they scream?"
"What? Oh yes. Then. Yes they could."  (p. 29)

What an enormously powerful image that gives us, after feeling the loneliness and acceptance of their lives limited by their dedication to their small world, to hear them screaming. To see a sudden flurry of violent activity in contrast to the quiet setting Munro has placed us in. To note a hesitancy in the father’s own pondering of the image as he recalls it, as if it were amazing to him as well.

Alice Munro is extremely skillful at creating a world from a slice of life that may seem ordinary, and yet she recognizes that ordinary often contains drama that the reader can easily recognize.  In this first story of the anthology, Munro lays out a simple setting, a farmhouse, a family, and a visit by a trio of old maid cousins. Munro allows us to get to know these people a bit, enough to feel comfortable with them and with the narrator of the story, a daughter who eventually moves away from the homestead and the small town mentality.

Munro pushes us ahead to a scenario where this daughter is married and living in what appears to be not a haven away from the farm, but a more sheltered and restricted area in which she fears her husband’s disapproval constantly.  When one of the last surviving elderly cousins comes to visit, it is a situation which brings out the expected worst in her husband’s elitist attitude, and worse, her discovery of her own shame of her background.

Munro always promises to bring interesting characters and soul-searching moments in her stories, and often it is not obvious that the character is doing this–the only giveaway being that he or she finds a reason to tell the story.

Trying to get more reading done and so I’ve grabbed one of the many Alice Munro anthologies I have on the shelves.

I’ve always loved Munro’s stories, since I first read one in a class many years ago.  Her style is penetrating yet succinct.  Her characters are real and multifaceted.

Should be a fun time.