‘Any Life Can Be Interesting’

 

“Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.” – Alice Munro

Born on this date in 1931, Canadian short story writer and Nobel Prize winner Munro is noted for “revolutionizing the architecture of short stories,” especially in her tendency to move forward and backward in time.   Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

A frequent theme of Munro’s work, particularly in her early stories like 1971’s Lives of Girls and Women, she focuses on the dilemma of girls coming of age and to terms with their families and small-town life.  In her later works like Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004), she shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone, and of the elderly.                            

                                        Winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, she also is a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction

“I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting,” she said about her works.   “I don't think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.”

 

 

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