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nlgeorge73's review against another edition
3.0
Insightful short story about how one struggles with decisions in life out of fear and insecurity.
ohkay28's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
5.0
blairconrad's review against another edition
4.0
Read in chunks, between other books, which I think is a good thing, since the stories ended up having a feeling of sameness that I think would only have been exacerbated by back to back to back reading.
Many of the individual stories were gems, but a few left me flat. That's the nature of an anthology, though. In some cases, I found the protagonist's motivations or actions to be a little inconsistent, and that threw me out of the stories a little bit.
Overall, though, the Munro writes beautifully, the language a joy to read, and each story brings something, some insight, to the reader.
Many of the individual stories were gems, but a few left me flat. That's the nature of an anthology, though. In some cases, I found the protagonist's motivations or actions to be a little inconsistent, and that threw me out of the stories a little bit.
Overall, though, the Munro writes beautifully, the language a joy to read, and each story brings something, some insight, to the reader.
novelesque_life's review against another edition
5.0
5 STARS
This collection of short fiction includes her works from the 1970s to present day. All of the stories have been published before in other volumes. This collection also has an introduction written by another Canadian author, Margaret Atwood
As the title states these are Alice Munro's best short fiction. The Canadian author recently won the Pulitizer for her writing and hopefully this will increase her readership and gain more fans. I have been reading Munro since I was in my early teens and have been in love with her work for years. She has the ability to take a story and that most authors would need a novel to tell and condense it to size of a novella. She is able to pack so much into them without it being overwhelming. A great collection to introduce or revisit Munro.
This collection of short fiction includes her works from the 1970s to present day. All of the stories have been published before in other volumes. This collection also has an introduction written by another Canadian author, Margaret Atwood
As the title states these are Alice Munro's best short fiction. The Canadian author recently won the Pulitizer for her writing and hopefully this will increase her readership and gain more fans. I have been reading Munro since I was in my early teens and have been in love with her work for years. She has the ability to take a story and that most authors would need a novel to tell and condense it to size of a novella. She is able to pack so much into them without it being overwhelming. A great collection to introduce or revisit Munro.
morgan_champine's review against another edition
3.0
This book had some really spellbinding stories, and then some that I found incredibly boring and fell very short. If you’re looking for a short story to read from this collection, I highly recommend “Vandals”.
jammasterjamie's review against another edition
4.0
Some really great and sometimes soul-quaking story-telling in this collection and it's easy to see why Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature a couple of years ago - She doesn't just have her finger on the pulse of the human condition; she has her hands shoved right up through the guts of it and squeezing the heart. While most of the stories rang out with harsh honesty and emotion, there were a couple in this collection that I felt were written less out of a need to share and more out of the want to write about a cool idea, and the differences between the two types were pretty glaring as the latter type of story felt very contrived and the emotions didn't ring as true, and those couple of stories kind of hurt my overall enjoyment of what otherwise would have been a five-star collection.
pphector's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
xtinevs's review against another edition
5.0
Alice Munro is one of the greatest writers (and possibly best short story writer?) of all time. Anything less than five stars for this collection is BLASPHEMY.