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Friend Of My Youth

4.28 of 5 stars 4.28 · rating details · 1,272 ratings · 62 reviews

A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger. The ten stories in this collection not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published December 5th 1991 by Vintage (first published 1990)

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Dec 22, 2009 ·Karen· rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, short-stories, favourites

Small town southern Ontario settings, ordinary people going about nothing more spectacular than living, loving, working, dying; but Alice Munro turns the seemingly mundane into glowing, jewel-like tales that reveal the ‘shameless, marvellous, shattering absurdity’ of life. Each story leaves you faintly breathless, full of wonder at how she can so smoothly pull back the curtain, reveal the essence, the core of being. What I particularly loved in this, her seventh collection, first published in 19...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Munro never disappoints. These are all wonderful stories. Though, plot-wise, my life is nothing like the stories here, I am left wondering after each story how Munro knows my inner life so well. Her grasp of human nature, her evocation of the world of her characters, all of it is astounding. The more I read of Munro, the more I am convinced of her genius.

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Nov 22, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alice Munro's short stories are always a delight to read, and Friend of My Youth is no exception. In almost every collection of hers I have read, there is a line or two of description that makes me start out of my chair and realize, yes, that perfectly describes something I have been feeling.

In Hateship, Friendship etc., it was a description of large family gatherings where no one ever says anything of consequence that described so many dinners at my grandmother's house. Not that those dinners w...more

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Feb 01, 2008 snackywombat (v.m.) rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: writers

Reading this was a long time in coming. The story "Meneseteung" that I read five years ago in the Best American Stories of the 20th Century was actually the first Alice Munro that I had come across and then over the years countless people--mainly writers--have mentioned her as a favorite. This stands to reason: Munro is a writer's writer. She spins tales; she writes real stories. Yet they have a modernism and sophistication that transcends time, place, trends, gender... everything. Her style rem...more

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May 14, 2012 Mariano Hortal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-literature, genre-short-story

"Amistad de Juventud" de Alice Munro. La escritora canadiense es una de las escritoras actuales más importantes sobre todo por su narrativa breve de la que es un fiel exponente.
Este libro se trata, pues, de una serie de relatos cortos, pequeñas novelas, en las que utiliza normalmente un narrador omnisciente para narrar pequeñas joyitas. En estas historias tenemos hombres que no están mal caracterizados, pero lo verdaderamente increíble es ver la forma en que dibuja, perfila e incluso hace escult...more "Amistad de Juventud" de Alice Munro. La escritora canadiense es una de las escritoras actuales más importantes sobre todo por su narrativa breve de la que es un fiel exponente.
Este libro se trata, pues, de una serie de relatos cortos, pequeñas novelas, en las que utiliza normalmente un narrador omnisciente para narrar pequeñas joyitas. En estas historias tenemos hombres que no están mal caracterizados, pero lo verdaderamente increíble es ver la forma en que dibuja, perfila e incluso hace esculturas de las mujeres. Son personas que casi puedes tocar y trata la psicología femenina desde muy diferentes ángulos: la relación de una hija con su madre ("Mi madre me sorprendía y lo hacía casi desinteresadamente. Su máscara, su destino y la mayor parte de su mal habían desaparecido. Qué aliviada y qué feliz me sentí. Pero ahora recuerdo que también me sentí desconcertada"), la infidelidad de una mujer y la espera hasta ese momento ("Lo que está deseando durante aquellas últimas horas lolega a no ser tanto algo físico, de modo que esa ausencia sería como perderse, no una comida que uno está deseando, sino una ceremonia de la que dependiese tu vida o tu salvación"), cuando una mujer recorre la infancia por el pueblo en que nace su marido, la amistad entre dos mujeres ("Dos niveles de amistad: como esposas y por sí mismas"), incluso ahondando en los motivos de la felicidad de una mujer ("algo en lo que centrarse. Un duro límite que quizá un día una podía atravesar en un hombre, un nudo en su mente que una podría deshacer, una tranquilidad que una podría sacudir, una ausencia que se le podría hacer lamentar"). En definitiva, mujeres imperfectas y responsables al final de buenas o malas elecciones, pero siempre poderosas,que se reafirman en su feminidad y que intentan (o consiguen) ser felices. La prosa desde luego resulta lírica y poética cuando se requiere, o seca y sin adornos en otros momentos, pero siempre transmite. Una gran escritora de historias breves.(less)

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Mar 01, 2009 Braden rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love many of the individual stories here: "Friend of My Youth" (esp. the narrator's reflections on her mother at the beginning and end, which frame the story), "Five Points" (Maria, you heartbreaking girl), "Meneseteung" (!), "Pictures of Ice," "Oh, What Avails" (Best sentence: "Joan wants to keep this idea of rubble at bay"), and "Wigtime" (Best sentence: "She wrote another that said 'BIG FAT SLOB WITH YOUR BABY-FACED MORON," but she tore that up--she didn't like the tone of it).

These storie...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Victor Carson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

I found this collection of short stories while looking for Alice Munro's new collection, which was just released this month. The stories in Friend of My Youth were copyrighted in 1990. I have read many of the author's stories but I continue to be mesmerized by her ability to reveal her characters so well that you feel sure that each of the stories really happened. A critic might say that the stories lack artistic unity and fail to leave the reader with an overall impression or a central idea. It...more I found this collection of short stories while looking for Alice Munro's new collection, which was just released this month. The stories in Friend of My Youth were copyrighted in 1990. I have read many of the author's stories but I continue to be mesmerized by her ability to reveal her characters so well that you feel sure that each of the stories really happened. A critic might say that the stories lack artistic unity and fail to leave the reader with an overall impression or a central idea. It is true that the author confronts you with action that is driven by emotions, chance, passion, or a setting that is beyond the author's control. Some novelists, such as D.H. Lawrence have a similar narrative style.

In this group of stories, I especially liked the following, from which I have extracted a few lines:

Friend of My Youth -- "The odd thing is that my mother’s ideas were in line with some progressive notions of her times, and mine echoed the notions that were favored in my time. This in spite of the fact that we both believed ourselves independent, and lived in backwaters that did not register such changes." And, "Oh, I knew you’d come someday. My mother surprising me, and doing it almost indifferently. Her mask, her fate, and most of her affliction taken away. How relieved I was, and happy. But I now recall that I was disconcerted as well."

Meneseteung -- "a child is afraid that she may be stolen by them, taken away from her family. Instead, her family has been taken away from her, stolen by Gypsies she can’t locate or bargain with." And, "People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish."

Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass -- "Perhaps he was making those two women happy. What could she mean by that? Maybe that he was giving them something to concentrate on. A hard limit that you might someday get past in a man, a knot in his mind you might undo, a stillness in him you might jolt, or an absence you might make him regret"

Oranges and Apples -- "It was unbearable to watch. In the presence of her child in the middle of the day, in her own back yard, she lay on the grass inviting him. Promising—no, she was already providing—the most exquisite cooperation. It was obscene and enthralling and unbearable."

Goodness and Mercy -- "She felt just the same thing, the same thing she always felt, when her mother sang. The doors flew open, effortlessly, there was the lighted space beyond, a revelation of kindness and seriousness. Desirable, blessed joy, and seriousness, a play of kindness that asked nothing of you."

Oh, What Avails -- "They have private names—their mother has made up most of them—for almost everybody in town. And she knows a lot of poetry, from school or somewhere. She will fix a couple of lines on somebody, summing them up in an absurd and unforgettable way." And, "Joan feels the dimness, the chilliness, the frailty and impermanence of these high half-bare rooms—of their house. It is just a place to be judged like other places—it’s nothing special. It is no protection."

Differently -- "On the night when she waited for Maya to call, some bitter, yeasty spirit entered into her. She saw herself as a person surrounded by, living by, sham. Because she had been so readily unfaithful, her marriage was a sham. Because she had gone so far out of it, so quickly, it was a sham."

Wigtime -- "Reuel told her he was sick of her and wanted her to go back to Europe, and in her despair she had thrown herself against a table and dislodged the baby."

Sometimes, I also think that Alice Munro's stories could only have happened in Canada. But, I myself grew up in Buffalo, New York and my own grandfather was Canadian. I recognize the settings and the thought patterns of Alice Munro's "Canadians" in my own life. I look forward to reading her new collection as soon as I can get a copy from the library.

(less)

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Jan 17, 2013 Rosamund rated it 5 of 5 stars

Munro’s stories often span the break between the prewar and the postwar. On the one hand there lingers a world where daughters and mothers bond over cuts of laced velvet dresses and car is a fantastic invention heretofore unseen. Turn a page and plump wives in sunglasses and cheap wigs rent vans to stalk on their cheating husbands and professors sleep with their students entranced by the haze of sexual revolution. It might be having witnessed such changes that has tinged Munro's writing with del...more

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Mosca "Sections follow one another like fine plates of tinted glass, dangling in the air to be speculated upon while their significance changes from moment...more
Mar 08, 2013 01:50pm

Rosamund Mosca, glad to hear I can pass her name on. Sorry I didn't reply to your comment; I was waiting until something clever would miraculously spring up in...more
Mar 08, 2013 02:00pm

Mosca Merely trying to communicate that your tastes in books are very intriguing.

I know that you are very busy toiling in publishing that is "under the rad...more
updated Mar 08, 2013 02:45pm

May 25, 2012 Nicola rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This lady stuns me in so many ways. She offers lessons in subtlety. Yes, brilliance can be quiet. Munro takes the past and modernizes it, rereads it with a more savvy and uncertain lens, with paradox. Themes of female sexuality, of desire, of deception (self and other), of (dis)connection, of still-present pasts, permeate this collection. No one escapes his/her history or historical contexts; individuals’ lives do not play out in a vacuum; generations are different, but it’s still complicated an...more

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May 31, 2013 Jeff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-story, favorites

Alice Munro is a straight up G. If you don't like her, you're probably a bad person.

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Apr 29, 2013 Oscar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cuentos-relatos, mainstream, míos, drama

’Amistad de juventud’ es un colección de diez relatos que bien pueden considerarse pequeñas novelas. Por las páginas de estas diez historias, transitan mujeres que rememoran su pasado y a las que vamos conociendo a través de sus sueños y deseos, así como de las decisiones que las han perfilado en lo que son en la actualidad. Una mujer que sueña con su madre muerta; una maestra que se ha de hospedar por un tiempo en casa de unos cameronianos; la aventura de una mujer casada; el viaje en barco que...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Lindsey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, private-life

An amazing short story collection. The stories have a way of pinpointing those pivotal moments in someone's life, those moments that might look like nothing to a looker-on, but those moments that give a person an "accidental clarity" (to steal a phrase from the story "Differently") and make you change the course of your life, for better or worse. In "Meneseteung" that moment is a violent domestic dispute among strangers; In "Wigtime" its seeing a waiter who resembles an old infatuation. But ever...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Suzanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

It would be hard to find fault with this collection; I dont think I have ever been disappointed in Munro. These stories are about women's choices, usually involving men, and how we live with the consequences. As they probably do to most readers, these hit very close to home, and leave me moved, if uncomfortable. I hope she never stops writing!

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Jul 23, 2010 Gypsy Lady marked it as to-read

"The ten miraculously accomplished stories in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.

"[Friend of My Youth is:] a wonderful collection of stories, beautifully written and deeply felt."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times"

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Jun 15, 2008 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars

You know who I love? Alice Munro. She is just quietly amazing. I wish Goodreads had a way to pick an author's entire work in one pick because I think I have read most of what she has written and love them all.

She writes only short stories, though stories in The Begger Maid add up to a novel narrative. She writes women and decisions and contemporary life in late 20th/early 21st century. She captures the mundane and makes it vibrate. You can read a simple story, then get the a-ha and the tragedy d...more

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Jan 01, 2010 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alice goes back in time in many of these stories to an earlier generation, that of her mother. The lead story is filled with surprises. What is real? What is true? Will love last? Well paced stories about the pretty and ugliness of humanity

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Feb 01, 2011 Sarah Ryburn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story

recent purchase from the clearance shelf at 1/2 price books in austin. $1 and worth every penny! actually worth several more. munro is a masterful story-teller in this form, and that's something coming from me. i spent years avoiding short stories until i encountered alice munro and alistair mcleod. wonderful collection, although i didn't like "wigtime" as the finale. i get the shared theme of "friend of my youth" and "wigtime," but i always expect the final story to be in some way the author's...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Isabel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Down-beat tales of small town life in Ontario. She seems to be fond of writing about people whose lives have been a disappointment to them. Well-written and very interesting, if a trifle depressing.

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Dec 09, 2012 Dave Comerford rated it 5 of 5 stars

The title story has left a impression that I feel will remain with me. From time to time I feel its images resurface with the same vivid and affecting insistence as a childhood memory.

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Mar 08, 2009 Clare added it

Can't argue. Sometimes I lose track of how many stories of hers I've already read. I revisit them anyway. Big theme here: infidelity.

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May 13, 2010 Lori rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

c. 1990
Early collection of short stories set in Canada. Interesting relationships. Enjoyable, but not WOW! page turners.

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Jun 23, 2008 J rated it 5 of 5 stars

Flaky Genius and I are currently reading this collection and other Munro stories for a class she's taking and the writing is universally great. The only complaint both of us have for Munro is why does every story, almost every single story, have to have someone having an affair. It's interesting and she always does it well, but after a while the schtick is just that -- a schtick. The predictability of this aspect is such that the moment I meet a third character in the story who is not immediatel...more

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May 31, 2007 Celeste Ng added it

I've always said I hated Alice Munro, ever since I had a teacher who ended every comment to me with "You should be more like Alice Munro." But I bought this book for the story "Meneseteung," which is amazing. It has all the hallmarks of an Alice Munro story--deliberate, unhurried pacing; careful unfolding; quiet language--yet is the most un-Munro-like story of hers I've seen. (If you've read this story in Updike's Best American, read it in this version; Munro adds one sentence that completely al...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Elsa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was my first Alice Munro collection, and it certainly won't be my last. Each story took me into a completely different world, filled with complex, fully conceived characters. She's really a master of the form. And short stories make perfect before-bed reading!

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Feb 22, 2011 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first collection of Munro's stories which I have read. What impressed me the most was how quickly she created fully rounded characters. I was interested in them and wanted to know what was going to happen to them.

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Mar 17, 2012 Peggy Walt rated it 5 of 5 stars

these stories are absolutely astonishing!!

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Aug 10, 2011 Emily January rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Alice Munro is second to none!

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Sep 06, 2012 Logan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kinda boring. Well-written, but each tale of domesticity and humdrum-ity fell flat for me after the first two stories. Just too much husbands and wives and domestic ho-hum. I understand there's plenty under the surface there, but I GOT BORED, YO. I actually stopped reading with 100 pages left. Onward!

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Jun 11, 2009 mia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fic-lit, favorites

my copy is all marked up. really frekking good.

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Feb 28, 2011 Kevin marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian, collections, fiction, own, alice-munro

27/273

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About Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro, née Laidlaw (born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short-story writer who is widely considered one of the world's premier fiction writers. Munro is a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction. Her stories focus on human relationships looked at through the lens of daily life. She has thus been referred to as "the Canadian Chekhov."

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Books by Alice Munro

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

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Quotes from Friend Of My Youth

“People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.” — 15 people liked it

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