Friday, July 19, 2013

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

 
Synopsis(via Goodreads):
 

Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers—the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize.

In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky—a late-nineteenth-century Russian émigré and mathematician—on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.

With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives.
 
This insomniac's opinion:
 
Oh, Alice Munro- how you know your craft. This collection of short stories was superb. Ms. Munro has a way of reaching into the story of a seemingly boring and benign character and immediately endear the reader to the character in such a way that it feels as though we know them intimately. She can bring such a wealth of emotions out of a story of every day life. I was brought to tears by several of the stories. A truly beautiful collection.
 
Worth staying up all night to read?
 
Yes!
 
Rating: 4 stars


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