Alice Munro - Runaway

[maggiethecat]

Just read one of the stories in the book - the one about Juliet whose daughter Penelope leaves home without saying goodbye and never makes contact again. I must say that it was hugely depressing - did anyone else feel this way after reading it?

anyone?
it's been hard to shake the feeling - perhaps because one dd is away on school trip which makes it more poignant.

I absolutely felt like this! Can't imagine how awful that would feel. Very beautifully written story. I hope your DD is home safe now!

dd back safe and sound. still makes me wonder what could have happened to Penelope that could make her want to be estranged from her mother without explanation.

I'm supposed to read Alice Munro's Dance Of The Happy Shades but gave up after the first two stories. They were just so dull that they sucked the life out of me. Should I give it another go?

never read it but felt similarly at start of Runaway thought gradually got pulled into stories and character

The stories are so boring, though. Boring people doing nothing at all. Gah.

I think her talent is her ability to detail the everyday and boring to make it other than that

Maybe that ability of hers had not yet developed in 1968, when she published the book I'm reading.

I struggled with Runaway and all of her other stories too. I have friends who really rate her, but I just don't get her, at all. Margaret Attwood is the one for me if I need a Canadian female author.

I think she's a genius, pure and simple. Whereas I think Margaret Atwood used to be a brilliantly talented novelist, but I find her environmentalist dystopian recent stuff quite turgid, compared to her work at its height.

Is the genius Alice Munro? Maybe she developed her genius is later years.

Have you read her earlier stuff? I'd love to hear if her recent stories are better than the 1968 dull-fest that I'm reading.