Review by Booklist Review
Munro's latest collection of stories exposes emotionally reverberant glimpses of family relationships. A woman recalls her own childhood and uses that memory to filter the effect of her mother's childhood on both their lives; a divorced couple makes their ruined marriage a battlefield for the husband's new girlfriend; and the near drowning of a child brings into focus a mother's fears and attitudes. In each case, Munro delicately etches a psychological portrait that mines the depths of feeling and disappointment that her characters experience in their lives. Munro is also the author of The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (Booklist 76:26 S 1 79). JB. [OCLC] 86-45281
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The characters in these 11 short stories have hearts that are startled or weighed down by the responsibilities of love, or which are gnawed by hidden hate and cruelty. PW wrote that Munro offers ``a freshness of vision, a breadth of sympathy and a wide-ranging imagination.'' (September) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A prize-winning Canadian author, Munro has been praised for such works as The Moons of Jupiter ( LJ 5/15/83) and The Beggar Maid ( LJ 10/1/79). Her new collection of 11 stories thoughtfully explores the themes of self-knowledge and love. Families, friends, eccentrics, loversthe characters all bear the marks and burdens of unpredictable individualism and humanity. Girlish friendship and imaginings end in betrayal, estrangement, and self-revelation over the years in ``Jesse and Meribeth.'' A small-town nurse in ``Eskimo'' unveils layers of female obligation and the complexities of love when trying to befriend a young girl on a plane to Tahiti. ``A Queer Streak'' has about it the satisfying subtlety, wholeness, and horror of legend. An accomplished collection. Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
More splendid examples of Munroe's unusual way with the story: how she seems to write about nothing fixed or stable, to pile on specificity upon dense specificity, then have the story resolve movingly without it having precisely homed. As in her other work, family and friends are the ever-shifting yet tight-margined main element here--and Munro need only throw enough of these people together, intimates in one degree or another, to have her story start its gorgeous meander. In the title story, an aunt's life becomes an obscure paradigm of ""love and grudges,"" elements that define Munro's human galaxy. The next story, ""Lichen""--a man's visit to his ex-wife, bringing along his new girlfriend; yet admitting to the motherly but sad ex-wife that he has yet another girl he's interested in--is a brilliant piece of psychological writing: dependency and affection and scorn all intermixed. ""Monsieur Les Deux Chapeaux""--the never-ending responsibility of one more ""settled"" brother for another--is nearly as good; and ""White Dump""--an almost plotless story set on vacation (a number of the stories here are)--tests feelings as a tongue does a tooth that's just about to hurt. Munro's fecklessness serves her less well in others; even with their masterful detail-accumulations, they seem a little too much the laid-back same. Yet everything here--strong and less so--still speaks of a writer who does something of her own and recognizably different with short fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
