Carried Away - (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) by Alice Munro (Hardcover)

About the Book

A dazzling selection of stories--17 favorites picked by the author--are collected here in one volume for the first time.

Book Synopsis

A dazzling selection of seventeen stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro--featuring an Introduction by Margaret Atwood

"Munro stands as one of the living colossi of the modern short story, and her Chekhovian realism, her keen psychological insight, her instinctive feel for the emotional arithmetic of domestic life have indelibly stamped contemporary writing."--The New York Times

The stories brought together in Carried Away span a quarter century, drawn from Alice Munro's earlier works. Here are such favorites as "Royal Beatings" in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; "Friend of My Youth" in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and "The Albanian Virgin," a romantic tale of capture and escape in Central Europe that may or may not be true but that nevertheless comforts the hearer, who is on a desperate adventure of her own.

Munro's incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn't know change her life forever, Munro's unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold.

Review Quotes

"Munro stands as one of the living colossi of the modern short story, and her Chekhovian realism, her keen psychological insight, her instinctive feel for the emotional arithmetic of domestic life have indelibly stamped contemporary writing."--The New York Times

"In Alice Munro's hands, the smallest moments contain the central truths of a lifetime."--Maclean's

"Alice Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America."--The New York Times Book Review

"Captivating . . . Munro does what most writers dream of doing and succeeds at it, page after page, story after story, collection after collection."--The Oregonian

"From a markedly finite number of essential components, Munro rather miraculously spins out countless permutations of desire and despair, attenuated hopes and cloudbursts of epiphany. . . . Every one of these women is different, and that is the wonder of Alice Munro."--The Village Voice

"Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time . . . In Munro's work, grace abounds, but it is strangely disguised: nothing can be predicted. Emotions erupt. Preconceptions crumble. Surprises proliferate. Astonishments leap out. Malicious acts can have positive consequences. Salvation arrives when least expected, and in peculiar forms."--from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood

About the Author

Alice Munro is the author of thirteen collections of stories--including Dear Life, Runaway, and Too Much Happiness--as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. Among the many awards and prizes she received are three Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes in Canada; the Rea Award; the Lannan Literary Award; the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the International Booker Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Alice Munro died in 2024.