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11th out of 11 books
—
7 voters
Dance of the Happy Shades
by
Alice Munro
Alice Munro's territory is the farms and semi-rural towns of south-western Ontario. In these dazzling stories she deals with the self-discovery of adolescence, the joys and pains of love and the despair and guilt of those caught in a narrow existence. And in sensitively exploring the lives of ordinary men and women, she makes us aware of the universal nature of their fears...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
March 2nd 2000
by Vintage
(first published January 1st 1968)
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Aug 20, 2012
Jenn(ifer)
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
lovers of Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, John Cheever, Chekhov and Faulkner
Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by:
s.penkevich
Intro (this piece inspired the title story): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BN7TG...
Does anyone remember Steve’s review of Lydia Davis’s “Collected Stories” when he said “Lydia Davis shits out tiny nuggets of pure golden prose and says 'oh, this old thing’'?”I didn’t exactly agree with him on the Lydia Davis front, but I would love to steal that quote and use it in reference to Alice Munro.
Alice Munro is a master story teller. No, she didn’t twist my brain into knots and exasperate me. No, she...more
Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live happily ever after-like them, dazed and powerful with secrets, I never said a word. (Images)
Thankfully Munro stores up those childhood secrets and works them with a strange alchemy into gold. Thi...more
Thankfully Munro stores up those childhood secrets and works them with a strange alchemy into gold. Thi...more
Mar 01, 2013
Laima
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Spenk and Karen
Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro
I really liked this book.
I liked it a LOT.
Ok… I loved it!
I’ve been meaning to read work by Alice Munro for a while so when I found a second hand copy of Dance of the Happy Shades for a few dollars, I picked it up.
This book is a Governor General’s Award winning collection of short stories.
The following quote by Hugh Garner in the forward to this book, pretty much, in my opinion, describes the quality and essence of Ms. Munro’s writing.
“The second-rate writ...more
I really liked this book.
I liked it a LOT.
Ok… I loved it!
I’ve been meaning to read work by Alice Munro for a while so when I found a second hand copy of Dance of the Happy Shades for a few dollars, I picked it up.
This book is a Governor General’s Award winning collection of short stories.
The following quote by Hugh Garner in the forward to this book, pretty much, in my opinion, describes the quality and essence of Ms. Munro’s writing.
“The second-rate writ...more
I think I've got to stop reading story collections. I get bored with the repetition of an author's style.
But I did find a lot of it interesting, such as this:
A house is all right for a man to work in. He brings his work into the house, a place is cleared for it; the house rearranges itself as best it can around him. Everybody recognizes that his work exists. He is not expected to answer the telephone, to find things that are lost, to see why the children are crying, or feed the cat. He can shu...more
But I did find a lot of it interesting, such as this:
A house is all right for a man to work in. He brings his work into the house, a place is cleared for it; the house rearranges itself as best it can around him. Everybody recognizes that his work exists. He is not expected to answer the telephone, to find things that are lost, to see why the children are crying, or feed the cat. He can shu...more
Stories of middle-class life - feeling out-of-it at a high school prom, having to endure a piano recital in an old lady teacher's home, being fitted for a home-made red dress because there was no money to buy one, a girl sneaking a peak at a horse being shot so there would be food to feed foxes her father was growing, trying to write in a rented office while being disturbed daily by the landlord, walking with your father to gather muskrats from traps...there are many more, and at least three tim...more
I chose this book for an independent reading project in my high school fiction class. My teacher suggested Munro because he though I could identify with her particular writing style. This collection kept me enraptured with plot, characters, and the numerous nuggets of unexpected beauty dispersed throughout. Alice Munro is a brilliant writer, a fact I believe can be affirmed by the end of the titular story, Dance of the Happy Shades. Her stories and the characters within them have the uncanny abi...more
When I found out I'd be moving to southwest Ontario, I thought I should finally read some Alice Munro and probably start with her first collection. It took a few tries, but I eventually got past the first story after about a year and was already settled in Ontario.
The prose, I suppose, is near flawless, but there's a such thing as being too quiet. Never thought I'd say it, but I am saying it. The collection reminds me a bit of Eudora Welty's stories minus all emotion and minus all reason for ex...more
The prose, I suppose, is near flawless, but there's a such thing as being too quiet. Never thought I'd say it, but I am saying it. The collection reminds me a bit of Eudora Welty's stories minus all emotion and minus all reason for ex...more
Another great collection from the author, it's not her best, but considering this was her first collection of short stories, I was very impressed with the quality of writing, characterization and plot development throughout the collect - especially compared to her other collections - it is one that same level of quality.
My favourite short stories from the collection where; The Office, Time of Death and Boys and Girls. Time of Death in particular was a very memorable read, and somewhat haunting....more
My favourite short stories from the collection where; The Office, Time of Death and Boys and Girls. Time of Death in particular was a very memorable read, and somewhat haunting....more
This is Alice Munro's first collection of short stories (1969). I knew she was a great short story writer and read a few of her stories here and there. I decided to read this collection. She is a Canadian and her stories are set in western Ontario. The people whose lives she enters are isolated and their lives never seemed to be touched by the outside world. In these often mean, old-fashioned setting she explores love and sex, family relationships, class tensions, growing up and growing old. She...more
Apr 13, 2009
Anne
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of the short story
Originally published in 1968, this is the collection of short stories that plummeted Alice Munro into acclaim in the literary world. Although the stories are memorable for their ability to evoke the emotion and minutiae of the everyday, they would more likely appeal to those who are old enough to have some understanding or knowledge of the Canadian experience of Munro's youth in the 1940s and 50s. In some ways, these stories are startlingly unique and universal at the same time, and some some le...more
This is a collection of Alice Munro's early stories, written in the 1950s and 1960s. By no means unpolished, these stories evoke a time and place, mid 19th century rural Canada, that is distant yet familiar. Told from the perspective of children, teenagers, and adults, mostly but not exclusively female, Munro can deftly conjure both external and interior landscapes. Munro's reputation as the eminent English language short story writer is well deserved. Even her earliest writings are beautifully...more
The little I’ve read of Munro shows a steady attentiveness to the particular, as opposed to the general, nature of the studied life. While a good deal of her later fiction makes thematic and consistent her concentration on the clarified lives of older women, this collection tends to recall and collect stories of children and childhood for the sake of their own peculiar awakenings, even where these are opened before and examined in a harshly retrospective gaze.
Stories like The Shining Houses and...more
Stories like The Shining Houses and...more
What what? Can this actually be a genre (or sub-genre)?
Either way, after the long wait to actually read some of her work, it appears I am in love with Alice Munro.
(here you have the most appropriate image from the first page of a "Southern Ontario Gothic" image search.)
Either way, after the long wait to actually read some of her work, it appears I am in love with Alice Munro.
(here you have the most appropriate image from the first page of a "Southern Ontario Gothic" image search.)
This is my first expierence of Alice Munro - an author I had heard good things of previously. These stories are beautifully written. Each story is satisfying, with characters you can't help but care about. This is something I don't always find with short stories, that the reader is able to step into the world the author is writing about within just a few pages. However each of these stories is set in the same sort of community, and so it becomes easy to step into the lives of these rural peoples...more
This is Alice Munro's first published collection. I hadn't read it for some years, and I'd forgotten how perfect some of the stories are. Such sureness of touch: it includes several of my favourite stories, notably Boys and Girls, Dance of the Happy Shades, and most especially Red Dress -- 1946. The comparisons with Chekhov and VS Pritchett are thoroughly justified.
I'm glad I got out of my comfort zone and read this book of short stories. Munro knows how to set a scene and develop a character in a matter of paragraphs, which is nothing short of astounding. Her writing is flawless, but I just couldn't get behind the dreary hopelessness of all the characters and their situations. It's certainly true-to-life, but just not my thing.
I love all of Alice Munro's short stories, and she shows the same careful attention to seemingly undramatic moments in these stories as she does in her later work. Nonetheless, this is her first collection of short stories, and I like her later stories better. These feel somewhat less subtle to me than her later work. I did love the title story.
This should be a 5-star for quality - I can't fault the spare prose and the way it speaks mind-to-mind, without ever a false note. There was a range of moods and I think my favourites were the creepy (The Office), the bittersweet (Walker Brothers Cowboy), the uncannily evocative of adolescence (Red Dress - 1946). I will have to read more Munro, when I can take the melancholy.
One more debt I owe Cheryl Strayed, her enthusiasm for Alice Munro in Wild got me to finally get over my bias against short stories (an admittedly irrational bias) and read. So glad I did. You can't go wrong with the first book by one f our living literary treasures, and I can't wait to read the rest of her work.
I really enjoyed this book. You would expect short stories like this to get repetative, but I found each one wholly entertaining in its own right. Munro is confident enough in her art to leave certain aspects of the stories unstated so that the reader has to fill in the blanks. I'm already looking forward to reading more books by this writer.
Er desværre først stødt på Munros noveller sent, og er generelt ikke-belæst ud i novellegenren. Men disse er fantastiske. Minimalistisk skrevet og deprimerende på den gode måde. Især den første, "Walker Brothers Cowby", og "The Time of Death" er anbefalelsesværdige.
Just a couple of the stories in this collection fell a little flat for me at the end -- however, every story surprised me in some way, all were masterfully crafted, and all were engrossing or interesting. I love Munro more every time I read another collection. Her stories are about ordinary people but they are gripping and emotional.
I think this is Munro's first collection of short stories, but it doesn't feel like the work of a debut writer. There isn't a story in it I didn't love. My favorites included "Walker Brothers Cowboy," "A Trip to the Coast"and "The Shining Houses."
Currently reading and already read. This book migrates back to my nightstand on a regular basis. It's my go to for those times I am 'bookless'. I can revisit these characters and stories over and over and learn something new each time.
A classic.
A classic.
This is my first time reading Alice Munro, and It's difficult to write a review because these stories were so subtle that I feel like I need to read them again before I can form cohesive thoughts. Smart stories, carefully crafted, deceptively simple, worth reading, and worth re-reading.
The beginning of my campaign to read all of Munro's books...in order. I was 5 years old when this one, her first, came out. Love it. The outskirts of Canadian towns, the young girls and women on the brink of learning some kind of truth about the world or about themselves, the language-always gorgeous, never overdone. Love it all.
The modern Chekhov, the greatest living short story writer, are epithets used to describe Alice Munro. Dance of the Happy Shades was her first short story collection. It has stories from the points of view of females, all ages, various walks of life, bringing out to us the reality of women's situation back then(published 1968). Feminist in tone, sure, they are little slices of life, just chunks from the characters' life mostly, and sometimes even offering neat, packaged endings. I won't say I em...more
I picked this book up at a small English bookstore in Krakow, Poland last spring. It kept me company while I was there and it is a unique book for its time.
This sad, ugly narrator, full of pride and self worth misses the epiphany of the story and somehow I like it. Its a brilliant bit of work.
My current reading obsession is short story collections by Canadian writer Alice Munro. The Dance of the Happy Shades is her first book, and although the stories are shorter they are still powerful, with complex endings that are never pat or even necessarily what you expect.
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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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“At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure—even at a time of the month when this could not be true—that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice—he read the Scriptures every morning—and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, made swooning faces, crossed their eyes, flung their hands over their hearts. Sometimes she would burst into tears, there was no help for it, she had to run out into the hall. Then the boys made loud mooing noises; our hungry laughter—oh, mine too—pursued her. There was a carnival atmosphere of brutality in the room at such times, scaring weak and suspect people like me.”
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“He tells me how the Great Lakes came to be. All where Lake Huron is now, he says, used to be flat land, a wide flat plain. Then came the ice, creeping down from the north, pushing deep into the low places. Like that—and he shows me his hand with his spread fingers pressing the rock-hard ground where we are sitting. His fingers make hardly any impression at all and he says, “Well, the old ice cap had a lot more power behind it than this hand has.” And then the ice went back, shrank back towards the North Pole where it came from, and left its fingers of ice in the deep places it had gouged, and ice turned to lakes and there they were today. They were new, as time went. I try to see that plain before me, dinosaurs walking on it, but I am not able even to imagine the shore of the Lake when the Indians were there, before Tuppertown. The tiny share we have of time appalls me, though my father seems to regard it with tranquillity. Even my father, who sometimes seems to me to have been at home in the world as long as it has lasted, has really lived on this earth only a little longer than I have, in terms of all the time there has been to live in. He has not known a time, any more than I, when automobiles and electric lights did not at least exist. He was not alive when this century started. I will be barely alive—old, old—when it ends. I do not like to think of it. I wish the Lake to be always just a lake, with the safe-swimming floats marking it, and the breakwater and the lights of Tuppertown.”
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1 person liked it
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updated Aug 17, 2012 07:12am
Aug 17, 2012 07:16am