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.
