Rating: 
Summary: deft and completely masterful prose...
Review: After concluding Alice Munro's story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and I have to say, I was blown away. Sometimes Munro's style perturbs me, notably in the recent New Yorker story where it took too long for the story to unravel and the payoff at the end may not have been worth the struggle to get there. Anyway, there was a touch of that in some of the stories in Hateship. The overall theme (well, for me at least) revolved around women who cannot control their fate and some of the stories truly sung for me while others such as "What is Remembered" and "Floating Bridge". True standouts were: "Queenie" with subtly Munro unravels a sister's misconception of her elder sister's marriage, "Comfort", the title story (although it is well over 50 pages, it is worth the investment for its rich, complex twist and the heartbreaking final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" was so arresting and masterful, I felt incredibly moved and intimidated all at once. Here is a writer that has refined her craft, razor sharp, precise. A marriage between a seemingly affluent and cosmopolitan couple disintegrates with Fiona's (the wife) onslaught of mental illness which takes her to a mental institution where she finally manages to have the last word with her adulterous husband. Survival in Munro's stories are always coupled with sorrow...survival is bittersweet.
Rating:
Summary: Genius
Review: Alice Munro astonishes me with her supple imagination, her direct and suprising language, the unconventional structure of many of her narratives, and always the brilliant, uncanny sense of emotional detail. As her career has progressed, her stories have become generally longer and also, I think, richer with subtle revelations of character and a sense of the complexity of human personality. No one aside from Chekhov satisfies me in the short story form as Munro so regularly does. Her writing shows a deep respect for the mystery of human motivation, and so often articulates a feeling that I've never seen put into words so effectively. She will sometimes change what I thought was at stake for a character and the result will be both inevitable and surprising. The impact of the endings of her stories comes over me with a goose flesh chill, not always immediately, but always eventually, and the effect resonates profoundly and intricately. My mind feels more alive and my imagination, more observant, after reading Alice Munro. She is one of the best practitioners of the short story, ever.
Rating:
Summary: Another great collection
Review: Alice Munro is my favorite living writer. Everyone else pales in comparison. My favorite stories in this collection were "Queenie" and "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." Although some other reviewers praised the title story, it was probably my least favorite in the book. (It seemed a little implausible.) I will say that her writing is an acquired taste--one cannot fully appreciate her stories on the first read. It takes me two or three times reading a story to catch all of her references, themes, and symbols. I like reading Munro because of her subtlety. Unlike some other writers of today (e.g. Toni Morrison) who beat you over the head with their heavy-handed symbolism and ideology, Munro focuses on telling a story in which emotions and meaning brew beneath the surface. I have read my favorite Munro story, "Royal Beatings," which is in her "Selected Stories" collection, 8 or 10 times and I never get tired of it. I think some readers are too quick to dismiss her stories as mundane because they revolve around everyday events in the lives of ordinary people. But that is what makes her writing so awe-inspiring--her ability to give profound meaning to the struggles of average characters who are all too human, who are very much like you or me.
Rating:
Summary: Great book from a master of the short story
Review: Alice Munro is one of the greatist living short story writers and for lovers of fiction the book is absolutely essential. No one else writes with such insight into their characters and is able to cover such emotional ground within the format of a short story. In short, her stories move you.
Rating:
Summary: Nine stories, most displaying the depth of a novel
Review: Alice Munro is the eminent Canadian award winning author of international fame. It is remarkable to find that Alice Munro is the only living author with a full-time professional career spent in writing short fiction. Her standards and her talent are quite breathtaking. She pours into each of her short stories the feeling of various Canadian regions and their characters, while offering appurtenance to the lives of her readers around the world. This is definitely not provincial writing, but worldly. In addition, she delivers the depth of a novel into many of her short works. Her new collection contains seven stories of roughly the same length,each around thirty pages,with two novellas of around 50 pages each serving as bookends. They are a treat. First off, Marriage, takes place in a small town when trains still joined communities and people wrote letters. It starts with a woman, Johanna, who wants to ship furniture to Saskatchewan. For why? Everyone is curious. Half the town knows the stationmaster personally, and guesswork pours over coffee cups. By end of the story we learn Johanna could have benefited from the advice a Toronto judge recently gave a neophyte lawyer, Don't ever assume anything. Floating Bridge is next. An Ontario woman named Jinny examines the reasons for her petty anger, out of which she comes to terms with her cancer. In a story called Comfort, religious-right creationists edge their way into a school, and begin to make life uncomfortable for a science instructor teaching evolution. What is Remembered, set in Vancouver and Victoria concerns the chance meeting between a bush pilot-doctor and a woman who has just attended the funeral of her husband's friend who may have committed suicide. Here, while telling a slight story, Munro's writing brilliantly captures the unease between the two. Most of the stories appear to occur in the immediate past, when rental cars had no radios, and many people smoked and spoke of ciggie-boos. Yet, they deal with current high-profile issues such as euthanasia, and coping with old age deterioration. Five of these first appeared in the New Yorker. All are of
consistent high quality.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Alice Munro's stories and the details and wit in her work are simple genius. Her characters are human and vivid and complex in a way that is fascinating and wonderful -- they are quiet, isolated people living in small towns, people who are dictated by history and tradition and propriety who tend to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. That's where the psychological drama and interest lies, and where Munro's talents are put to the test. She passes with flying colors.
Rating: 
Summary: Alice, show me some passion!
Review: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro's latest collection of nine short stories is a languid, slow journey through the rather unremarkable lives of characters, who have the potential for, but fail to achieve greatness. The characters that Munro has created in these nine stories are weak and often dull. In fact, despite the depth of the situation that each character faces, whether as protagonist or supporting character, Munro does not manage to make her characters captivating. Perhaps what is most detrimental in her characterizations is that Munro has tried too hard to make her characters believable. Is it that Munro truly feels that human beings are so deliberate, so mild, so bland? Their responses and reactions to upsetting, passionate, shocking and even disastrous situations are simply too commonplace. Munro throws her characters into the very situations that plague, astound, comfort and rattle us all. The situations are familiar, if exaggerated and have the potential to elevate her characters into compelling individuals. In the first story, Munro marries an entirely too plausible situation to one that is so strange that it seems farcical, and somehow creates a story fit for myth or legend. Two young girls take fate into their own hands and manipulate an emotionally needy woman. The ironic outcome should surprise and astound the reader, but the characters never truly manage to pull the reader into the story. The title of the collection represents all of the stages of love, not necessarily in chronological order, and Munro manages to weave these into each of her stories. Her characters deal with brief, transient moments that endure a lifetime, or alternately, lifelong relationships that lose all meaning and context in an instant. Unfortunately, Munro's characters remain flat and stagnant despite these situations that should create action and movement. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is not a page-turner, but Munro does manage to redeem herself through her commentary on the role that love, acceptance and need play in our lives. Her characters are not entirely stimulating, but perhaps this is because Munro is trying to make them identifiable. She does not make excuses for them, but rather offers them up with all their madness, their misdeeds, their scars, their bad judgment, and their blind devotion. Perhaps she believes that we should do the same, but I would prefer to see their passion.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleased
Review: I am not too sure what to say about this collection of short stories. While Munroe give amazing depth to the stories I found that there was very little movement in the stories and they seemed merely to describe various incidents in the lives of some interesting people. The writing is clear and crisp and there are some beautifully described insights that bring one to a stop in the middle of the page to wonder and reflect on one's own life. Overall though I found that this book was not up to some of her other writings. 3.5/5
Rating: 
Summary: Everybody loves Alice?
Review: I give this one 2 stars even though I've only read a couple pieces from it. She's a good, earnest writer with control of her craft and a perhaps too pedestrian imagination. Sometimes that can be a plus (see my note on Julia Slavin, who could use some pedestrian), but here there's overmuch pedestrianism. For better stories, read Wm. Trevor, V.S. Pritchett, Carver, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, some Russians, and more recently the elder Barthelme, Rick Bass, Cheever, etc. If you must have New! This week! try the Best American series, though much of what ends up there is drivel. Good stories are harder to find than they used to be. I'm bumping this one up to 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Pleased
Review: Pure Alice Monroe. Some in my Book Club aren't big fans but I think she is great. Always in tune, perseptive and warm in her observations. Gives the ordinary meaning and colour.
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