Alice Munro

A collection of short fiction captures the lives of women of all ages and circumstances, as they deal with the limits and lies of passion, unfulfilled dreams, motherhood, betrayal, and the bonds of love.

Stories

Runaway

Patrick Book

The devil is in the details, and the details in these stories are downright majestic.

Carolina Lopes

The matchless Munro makes art out of everyday lives in this dazzling new collection. At its centre are three stories connected into one marvellously rich narrative about Juliet - who escapes from teaching at a girls' school and throws herself into a wild and passionate love match. Here are men and women of wildly different times and circumstances, their lives made vividly palpable by the nuance and empathy of Munro's writing. Runaway is about the power and betrayals of love, about lost children, lost chances. There is pain and desolation beneath the surface, like a needle in the heart, which makes these stories more powerful and compelling than anything she has written.

Phil James

I'd heard how good Alice Munro is and how she's the best living short story writer but as a guy, the domestic detail themes were putting me off, a little.
If you are male and think this writer isn't for you, you'd be wrong. If you are a feeling human being you'll get something from them. She has a way of letting the stories resonate with each other, so that they move deeper feelings like really good poetry, yet on the surface there is nothing flashy, just "ordinary" lives, being lived out.
Some of the stories are connected with the same characters and some are separate, but I come away with the feeling of a unified force.

Runaway Stories

Reviews