Alice Munro (Contemporary World Writers)

0.0

Alice Munro is Canadax2019;s greatest short story writer. This book, the first full length study of her work published in Britain, explores the appeal of Munrox2019;s fictions of small-town Canadian life with their precise attention to social surfaces and their fascination with local gossip andscandal. This is a world of open secrets, and Howells highlights Munrox2019;s distinctive storytelling methods which combine the familiar and the unfamiliar, slipping between realism and fantasy to make visible what is usually hidden within everyday life. These are womenx2019;s narratives, full of silent female knowledge--of female bodies, love stories and romantic fantasies as well as female casualties. Munro takes up the traditional subjects of womenx2019;s fiction through her storiesx2019; significantly female plots, stories of entrapment and escape attempts, where secrecy and silence become strategies of resistance. Munrox2019;s enthusiasm for the work of other women writers from Emily BrontxEB; and L. M. Montgomery to Eudora Welty is emphasized as Munro continues to experiment with the short story form, creating worlds which are both "touchable and mysterious."

0.0

Coral Ann Howells is Professor of English and Canadian Literature at the University of Reading.