Dear Life by Alice Munro

Originally published in Time Out Chicago, December 13, 2012

There’s no question that Alice Munro can write one hell of a short story. She has won basically every major literary prize, from the Booker to the Lannan, and her work is regularly published in high-profile places like Harper’s and The New Yorker. With more than a dozen collections under her belt, the Canadian author could afford to be more experimental, and yet her latest, Dear Life, is for the most part a return to familiar territory. The earmarks of her style are present in every story: small-town settings and emotionally adrift characters leading quiet lives until something extraordinary disrupts their routines. In “Dolly,” it’s the arrival of a spouse’s former sweetheart; in “Gravel,” a tragedy involving the narrator’s older sister. Ironically, death is everywhere in Dear Life, and the profound experience of attending one’s first funeral plays a key role in the developing psyches of several of the younger protagonists.

The final four stories, thankfully, break the mold. She notes that they are “not quite stories” but “autobiographical in feeling…the first and last—and the closest—things I have to say about my own life.” These brief sketches are all told in first-person from the point of view of an adolescent girl, presumably Munro. There is an unfinished, unresolved quality to these vignettes that makes them feel more personal, less polished and more risky than the rest. One can’t help but wish she’d built an entire collection around them instead of appending them here as a final act in what is otherwise run-of-the-mill Munro. Dear Life is a well-crafted if not groundbreaking collection. It’s not Munro’s best, but that still makes it better than most.