Michael's Book Babble
I'm an indie author and a scribbler of inane babble. I talk about books I've read/liked. Or at least, that's the plan.
Most of the reviews will be considered "mini-reviews." Usually, it's mostly my reaction to what I've been reading. There are people who are far better at doing full and helpful reviews. But I still have fun doing them, and hope you enjoy them!
Another superb and flawless offering from Munro
Runaway by Alice Munro is another wonderful collection, filled with complex relationships and suffocating struggles. The book contains eight stories (three of them center around a single character). In each story, Munro paints us an in-depth picture of a woman struggling with life-altering decisions--and not all of them turn out happily.
What I love about this collection is since there are only eight stories, Munro gives them room to breathe and spread out. Eight stories may not sound like a lot, but clocking at over 330 pages, what we're given are almost miniature novels. And each one is engrossing and heartbreaking.
Because there are only eight stories, and since I loved every single one of them, it'd be useless for me to list my favorites. I would, more so than in the past, be simply copying the ToC. There isn't a weak story to be found here. Each story is alive and unique. The Juliet trilogy (as I call it) is composed of three stories, "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence." Although you will get a lot more out of the three stories if you read all of them and have read them in order, the stories are strong enough to stand on their own.
Since this is one of the rare instances where I'm not listing my favorite stories (again, that's how excellent this collection is), I can tell you what my overall favorite story was. That would be "Trespasses." The story is filled with amazing tension and unease. You get the sense something is terribly wrong with the picture, and you're just waiting for the other shoe to finally drop. The story surprised me, and it's bound to go down as one of my overall favorite stories of Munro.
To quote Jonathan Franzen, "Runaway is so good that I don't want to talk about it here. Quotation can't do the book justice, and neither can synopsis. The way to do it justice is to read it." He's right on the money with that. I know this review is just a really poor attempt on my behalf to sum up what I love so much about the book. No review I can cook up can ever do this justice. If you were ever thinking of checking out Munro, Runaway is not a bad place to start. Not at all.
5 stars
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