Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - (Vintage International) by Alice Munro (Paperback)

About the Book

A superb new collection from a best-loved writer, these nine stories draw readers immediately into that special place known as Munro territory--a place where an unexpected twist of events or a suddenly recaptured memory can illumine the arc of an entire life.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro come nine short stories with "the intimacy of a family photo album and the organic feel of real life" (The New York Times)

"In Munro's hands, as in Chekhov's, a short story is more than big enough to hold the world--and to astonish us, again and again."--Chicago Tribune

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

In the nine breathtaking stories that make up this collection, Alice Munro creates narratives that loop and swerve like memory, conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.

The fate of a strong-minded housekeeper with a "frizz of reddish hair," just entering the dangerous country of old-maidhood, is unintentionally (and deliciously) reversed by a teenaged girl's practical joke. A college student visiting her aunt for the first time and recognizing the family furniture stumbles on a long-hidden secret and its meaning in her own life. An inveterate philanderer finds the tables turned when he puts his wife into an old-age home. A young cancer patient stunned by good news discovers a perfect bridge to her suddenly regained future. A woman recollecting an afternoon's wild lovemaking with a stranger realizes how the memory of that encounter has both changed for her and sustained her through a lifetime.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best--tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.

Review Quotes

"Surely Munro's best yet." -The New York Times Book Review

"She is the living writer most likely to be read in a hundred years." -Mona Simpson, The Atlantic Monthly

"One of the foremost practitioners of the art of the short story. . . . These tales have the intimacy of a family photo album and the organic feel of real life." -The New York Times

"A writer to cherish. . . . The sheer spaciousness of Munro's storytelling, her gift for surprising us with the truth about ourselves, has transcended national boundaries." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"In Munro's hands, as in Chekhov's, a short story is more than big enough to hold the world-and to astonish us, again and again." --Chicago Tribune

Praise from fellow writers:

"Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does." --Jhumpa Lahiri

"She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion." --Jonthan Franzen

"The authority she brings to the page is just lovely." --Elizabeth Strout

"She's the most savage writer I've ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive." --Jeffery Eugenides

"Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can."--Julian Barnes

"She is a short-story writer who...reimagined what a story can do." --Loorie Moore

"There's probably no one alive who's better at the craft of the short story." --Jim Shepard

"A true master of the form." --Salman Rushdie

"A wonderful writer." --Joyce Carol Oates

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.