What We Forgive Ourselves

Title: Dear Life
Author: Alice Munro
Host: Shirley at Liz's

From the publisher: "In story after story....Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancee, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer." In addition, "four autobiographical tales offer an unprecedented glimpse into Munro's own childhood."

This book is a multi-award-winner, and Munro herself won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.

Insights and Opinions

+ Our conversation opened with this question from Shirley: "Which of these stories do you remember most?" Now, this may seem an odd start to a book club discussion about a story collection, but we asked because we all admitted to having a hard time remembering any. Yet all of us had a strong memory of the book itself -- not the stories, not the plots, but the mood, the color, Munro's writing. When pressed, we flipped through our pages, calling out specific stories. "Oh yes, Train!" "Oh, of course, Amundson!" Munro takes you deeper than the story. How is that possible? It's Alice Munro magic.

+ Munro's characters are layered and often inscrutable. Their behavior is often surprising and sometimes inexplicable, but completely right for the story. We wondered if the motivation of Munro's characters was era-specific -- is it that the people in her stories are uncaring? Or, are they a reflection of a time in which reflection just wasn't done, where passion was kept in check?

+ Munro tells us herself, in the final line of her final semi-autobiographical essay, when she is explaining why she did not go home for her mother's last illness or funeral: "We say of some things that they can't be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do -- we do it all the time."

+ From her warm-weather hideaway, Vickie sent us these notes:

"I was reminded of hearing Charles Baxter discuss "counterpointed characterization" when I was a student in the Warren Wilson MFA program. HIs lecture later became a chapter in his collection of essays on writing, Burning Down the House. (Here) is a quick summary...as described by writer Lee Martin in his blog:

'"In this chapter ("Counterpointed Characterization"), Baxter takes to task the conflict model for the structure of a short story. That is to say, the protagonist pitted against an antagonist; one person wants something, another person wants something else. Voila. Conflict. Baxter argues that stories often don't work that way. He says the conflict can actually be very slight in a short story, and that often counterpointed characterization creates the tension.

By counterpointed characterization, he means the pairing of characters who 'bring out a crucial response to each other.'"

+ Vickie pointed to "In Sight of the Lake" as one example which seems to place the man who meets Nancy in his private garden and leads her to the "home" as a counterpointed character to Nancy. This man has come to his home after a friend died. He is kind, but he does lead her to a very different kind of home -- one from which she will not have the ability to come and go as she pleases. The ending of this story is stunning and shows why Munro is such a master storyteller.

+ The last four autobiographical stories are an amazing group. It is so clear in these how she has used the themes of her life in her fiction, but these are looser and less tidy that her other short stories. Even in these, she can't avoid those mysterious people who appear in our past. As Vickie pointed out, "this story has another amazing ending, which shows me Alice Munro's honest but strangely ambiguous reaction to those things we do in this 'dear life'."

+ Linda, who had to miss our conversation, said by email: "There is a lot to commend Dear Life, especially the marvelous, interesting characters. I underlined several passages in the collection, but …. I loved this quote from "Dolly" -- 'Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry? And not too much or not too little, just enough."

+ In the final analysis, we agree: These are wonderful stories. All of them.

Other Details

+ Next month, we read The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, at Joanne's house.

+ For April, we will be reading a classic. After some names were batted around, we settled on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The motion carried.