Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Modern Fiction: The Progress of Love by Alice Munro

Alice Munro is recognized and acknowledged as one of the greatest living short story writers. She has had many collections of short stories published and The Progress of Love deals, like much of her work, in the examination of human relationships in all their complexity through the minutiae of daily living in small, provincial and rural Canadian towns.

A young man examines his sense of responsibility for a younger sibling when he recalls the terrifying trauma of his childhood. A woman divorces and seeks sanctuary in her childhood home where she must confront her parent's ambiguous relationship. The trust between parents and their children is tested after the accidental near-drowning of a child. These are some of the themes of the stories in this collection, and through the lives of the protagonists we shine the light into the dark corners of our own humanity.

In this collection Alice Munro examines, in elegant witty prose, the constant paradoxes of our lives where responsibility vies with freedom, security with independence, and creativity with obligation.

Alice Munro bibliography

Novel
Lives of Girls and Women – 1971

Original short story collections

Dance of the Happy Shades – 1968
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You – 1974
Who Do You Think You Are? – 1978
The Moons of Jupiter – 1982
The Progress of Love – 1986
Friend of My Youth – 1990
Open Secrets – 1994
The Love of a Good Woman – 1998
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - 2001
Runaway – 2004
The View from Castle Rock – 2006
Too Much Happiness – 2009
Dear Life – 2012

Short story compilations

Selected Stories – 1996
No Love Lost – 2003
Vintage Munro – 2004
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories – 2006
New Selected Stories - 2011

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