Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro




Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro, is a surprising collection of short stories.  Munro has the unique ability to take an everyday situation and impart a strangeness to it.  

"Wenlock Edge" is one of the more obvious examples.  In this story, the young female protagonist appears to inhabit our world, until she gets involved with experiences at the very margin of the normal.  And her reactions to her situation are telling, and reveal what Munro thinks about human behavior and our reactions to the liminal.

These stories are gripping, compelling, and have the force of necessity.  This is high praise for art: the feeling that it must be written; that it is good that it has been written.

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