Alice Munro: Runaway

I have a confession to make. I hadn't read any Alice Munro until recently, when I decided that I should give the latest Nobel Prize for literature a try. I came across this collection of short stories, without much preparation, knowing only that "Alice Munro is the queen of the short story". Well, only a few pages in I could see why. This has to be the best short story collection I've ever read (a close tie would be Raymond Carver's Cathedral - but more about that some other time).

Runaway - published in 2004 - contains eight stories and leaves you feeling as though you have read eight full length novels. Each story is centered around a main character and all of the characters are brilliantly created. As readers we are immediately carried within the characters' worlds and so immersed in their lives that at the end of each story we feel as though we had just lived a whole rich, deep and compelling life with them. Even in terms of time, Munro isn't afraid to take us back into their past and forward to their last days, within the space of a few dozen pages. In doing so, she elicits our understanding and deep sympathy for their motives and desires. At the same time - and this is what makes the stories so compelling - we are left feeling that a mystery is still intact. We have witnessed something true, but we can't exactly pinpoint what it is. Each plot leads us breathlessly to the end leaving us to realise that this is - of course - the only possible ending, and at the same time questioning why. There is a necessity that we can only recognize and not dare to explain.
 The stories themselves for the most part concern ordinary people in ordinary situations, but the realism is so vivid, the psychological analysis so keen and the emotion so powerful -  but never over the top - that they stay with you long after you have finished reading.What Munro explores so well is the dynamics of desire and how this enters in all human relationships: mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, friends, lovers.
My impulse after finishing each story was to close the book, not wanting to talk about the story or attempt to analyze it, but simply silently acknowledging the mysterious truth that had been portrayed.  I realize that I am not giving many details about the stories themselves, but the truth is the only thing I really feel compelled to say is what Jonathan Franzen wrote about this book for The New York Times Book Review:

"Runaway is so good that I don't want to talk about it here. Quotation can't do the book justice, and neither can synopsis. The way to do it justice is to read it . . . Which leaves me with the simple instruction that I began with: Read Munro! Read Munro!" 

And that's exactly what we all should do.

Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge

For a long time graduate school got the best of me and I actually considered deleting this blog altogether. Now, I'm back, at least temporarily, with a review of a wonderful collection of short stories I recently read. I had previously read Abide with me, by Elizabeth Strout, and while I enjoyed it I wasn't pulled into it as much as with this collection. I recently picked up this Pulitzer Prize winning collection, after hearing the author present her latest work The Burgess Boys, which I haven't read yet, since my budget doesn't allow for the purchase of hardcover books at this time. If her newest novel manages to even come close to Olive Kitteridge I will be happy to have read it, because I absolutely loved the short stories. The structure of the collection is what critics usually call a composite novel, in which all the stories are linked together by a common setting and characters that return in the various stories. A lot like in Sherwood Anderson's Whinesburg, Ohio, the action here takes place in a small town in Maine, where everyone - mostly old people - knows each other and all the characters' stories are linked to each other in some way. Olive Kitteridge herself is a crabby old math-teacher who observes her neighbors with contempt more often than understanding, but you learn to love her as the book goes on. The structure of the composite novel allows you to see the different characters from many points of view and really get to know them and if not understand at least feel for them. It also sheds light on what the characters understand of themselves and of each other. Olive herself is the main link between the stories, although she appears only fleetingly in a few of them. I guess if I had to find a concise way to describe the main theme of this book I would define it as compassion and understanding. Many characters - and the protagonist most of all - are not immediately lovable, heroic or endearing. However, by understanding more about their motives, deep desires and hidden weaknesses we come to feel true empathy toward them. In a way, it is the same empathy that Olive herself feels toward many of the people she meets, although her absolute lack of sentimentality make her appear harsh and unfeeling. Although she is absolutely incapable of expressing her affections, there is an honesty about Olive that does give her an aura of heroism at the end, just as her frustration for her failed relationship with her son shows her in all her weakness. At the end of the day she seems to know the fundamental truth regarding herself and all the other villagers: a desperate need to be loved.
It is not an especially light or happy read, but it is so well written that it is really easy to get absorbed in. I don't agree with some reviewers and bloggers who have called it depressing - although it is true that some of the themes are pretty dark (most characters are either sick, dying or miserable). What truly made it a great book, for me, is Elizabeth Strout's writing style, her control, her use of point of view, the nuances of her language. Maybe it is a sign that I'm getting older, but her wit and humor made me laugh out loud a couple of times, while my heart was breaking at the same time.

Katherine Mansfield: In a German Pension

This is a collection of short stories published in 1911 and it is Mansfield's first published book. I have mixed feelings about it, since I like her writing style, which is very pre-modernist and minimal, but struggled with its crude cynicism. Most of the stories are written in first person and describe the affectations of the German bourgeoisie at leisure, as seen by the author during her stay at the Bavarian spa town of Bad Worishoven. The voice that comes through is that of a very modern and independent woman, who questions the conventions that she witnesses among the other guests. But the voice is also very bitter and sarcastic, with never a kind word for any of the characters. It's an effective portrayal of the emptyness and snobbery of those around her, who are constantly patronizing the young writer (like the Professor does in The Modern Soul, for instance), and who end up seeming stupid as the events take their course. The Sister of the Baroness, for example, tells of the guests' delight to hear that an aristocrat is going to honor their pension by sending her daughter to stay, and of their dismay when they realize that the Baroness's "sister", who they have idolized, is only a servant. The narrator, who is always extremely polite, quiet and meek is actually not very subtle in mocking these Germans, who are so wrapped up in class differences and yet can't tell a noble from a common servant. Mansfield's look on marriage and motherhood is sour, as well. Her opinion on men appears especially negative, considering their oblivion to the pain of child-bearing, in At Lehman's, or their vulgar nature, in The Swing of the Pendulum. Not that the women seem much better, especially with their weekness-turned-falseness towards men (the cruel and cold Elsa in A Blaze), and with their hardness towards one another. Mansfield is often quite funny in her wry observations, and even the titles and names she gives to the characters are ironic, such as The Advanced lady. One story that stands out is The-Child-Who-Was-Tired. In other stories we witness the desperate fall of any moment of hope or kind thought, but this tragic narrative is the only one in which bitterness is mixed with true compassion, making it a real gem. I've never read anything else by Katherine Mansfiled and would certainly like to, as I did appreciate the collection, and especially since the author herself in later years considered the book "nothing to be proud of" because of its youthful bitterness. And I have found in other authors that the first works are more cynical, as though the bitterness of youth at the realization that not all in life goes as it should weren't yet softened by a deeper understanding of and compassion toward human nature.