Reading Alice Munro's Breakthrough Books - by Struthers & Ailsa Cox & Corinne Bigot & Catherine Sheldrick Ross

About the Book

This engaging volume provides an authoritative assessment of the middle period in the career of the widely-read, Nobel Prize-winning short story writer Alice Munro

Book Synopsis

What in terms of Alice Munro's creative artistry and creative power allowed her to become the first and only short story writer, the first and only Canadian, and just the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? And exactly when during Munro's career did her artistry and power advance to ensure that she would earn such world-wide renown? The answers lie in studying the boldly innovative yet greatly under-examined group of her four mid-career breakthrough books. Our volume therefore provides a carefully orchestrated analysis of Munro's subtle yet potent handling of form, technique and style both within individual stories and across these special collections. Reading Alice Munro's Breakthrough Books: A Suite in Four Voices not only addresses a significant vacancy in Munro criticism - and, by extension, in all short story criticism - but, equally importantly, offers an exciting new model for how criticism can be collectively written.

Review Quotes

Alice Munro is largely responsible for rescuing the short story from being overshadowed by the novel. The four critics here demonstrate how Munro moved from telling stories to creating complex explorations of reality as multilayers of memory and perspective.--Charles E. May, California State University, Long Beach

As Alice Munro's stories grew, and their plots enfolded, they rarely strayed from the southwest Ontario--"Munro Country"--of her birth. We accepted their authenticity, and suspected, but never confirmed, an autobiographical impulse. This meticulous and timely study lifts the folds and disentangles a distressed life from her consummate art.--Clark Blaise

The contributors to this book have done an incredible job in addressing Alice Munro's talent, her understanding of the short story as a window to life, ever expanding, ever progressing, in search of life and its own essence. I highly recommend that you read it.--Maurice A. Lee, Director of the biennial International Conference on the Short Story in English

The pleasure in these essays is that they are less essays than passionate engagements with Munro's words, sentences and punctuation. They do not ask of the stories What but, rather, How. Each essay on what is terra incognita leaves us gazing out, silent, as it were, upon a peak in Darien. These are by far the best illuminations of Munro's work yet written.--John Metcalf, writer and fiction editor at Biblioasis Press

This book is a breakthrough in Munro critical scholarship. A collaboratively authored project by four Munro specialists, for the first time it foregrounds the Nobel Prize winner's four mid-career short story collections and her innovative reshaping of the genre. A revelatory reading of the multilayered narrative complexity which is Munro's distinctive signature.--Coral Ann Howells, University of Reading / University of London