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Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers—the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize.
In the f... read full description
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reviews
Oct 01, 2011
Teresa
rated it: 
Five of these stories I'd read before (online at the New Yorker) and it was a pleasure to read them again, even to note a few subtle changes that had been made, in particular, with the one I think is my favorite ("Face"). This pleasure in reading Munro, I think, comes not from her characters or her plots, though she obviously is very talented in those facets, but from the themes of the stories, some of which need to be teased out. I especially felt this way with a story ("Wood"
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Apr 29, 2010
Beth
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Now I've listened to the collection as well as read it. A slightly different take but equally brilliant.
Every story is to be savored. Like an exquisite meal in which one flavor builds upon the next, Munro's stories appear deceptively simple but offer great satisfaction as they take hold of one's imagination.
The first story is about a woman who has lost three children. This horrific fact is described without emotion as we follow Doree (the children's mother) in the aft More...
Every story is to be savored. Like an exquisite meal in which one flavor builds upon the next, Munro's stories appear deceptively simple but offer great satisfaction as they take hold of one's imagination.
The first story is about a woman who has lost three children. This horrific fact is described without emotion as we follow Doree (the children's mother) in the aft More...
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Nov 13, 2011
KJ
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More beauty from Munro. It's getting hard for me to review her writing - to distinguish a four star from a five. She's just a brilliant writer.
There are ten stories in this collection. Each is vastly different; from "Too Much Happiness" about the last days of Russian author and mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya to the haunting story of young co-ed in her first year of college "Wenlock Edge", Munro's women move through life with steam - taking it as it comes and, s More...
There are ten stories in this collection. Each is vastly different; from "Too Much Happiness" about the last days of Russian author and mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya to the haunting story of young co-ed in her first year of college "Wenlock Edge", Munro's women move through life with steam - taking it as it comes and, s More...
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Sep 23, 2011
Dou Dou
rated it:
Alice Munro's writing is certainly beautiful, also somewhat poetic. This book deserves a four star. A four star for its elegant writing style, including the great selection of vocabulary and how the sentences appeared to be structured in a very professional manner that created such a smooth flow, unlike fiction stories with everyday language containing lots of dialogues that exists on bookshelves everywhere nowadays, the stories within this book are definitely different. Yet the final star would
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Jul 15, 2011
Marleen
rated it:
Read for The Loft Bookshop Book club
I rarely read short stories. They don’t really work for me. I always end up feeling short-changed. I’m only getting into a story and it is over. I want more from my reading than short stories seem to be able to give me. More character development, more background information and more time to get used to the tone and flow of the story.
In fact, after I finished the first story in this collection I wrote the following down: To me short stories are More...
I rarely read short stories. They don’t really work for me. I always end up feeling short-changed. I’m only getting into a story and it is over. I want more from my reading than short stories seem to be able to give me. More character development, more background information and more time to get used to the tone and flow of the story.
In fact, after I finished the first story in this collection I wrote the following down: To me short stories are More...
Apr 13, 2011
David
rated it:
Alice Munro is my favourite living short story writer, and this collection does not disappoint except, strangely for the long title story. Unlike the other contemporary pieces, this one is set in the nineteenth century and centres on the real-life Sophia Kovalevsky, a Russian mathematician and novelist. The story simply did not come to life for me, and it seems out of place among the rest of the collection, though Munro clearly wants to draw attention to it through the title. Other readers may b
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Nov 28, 2010
mstan
rated it:
I am so happy. It's school vacation time, and I'm tearing through books again (after having faced a drought almost the entire year). This one probably warrants a much more leisurely pace than I've adopted with it.
There are 10 short stories in this collection, and my favourite is, predictably, 'Fiction', which is about a couple whose marriage falls apart. Not much time is spent on the disintegration though; more surprising is the inclusion of the plot of a story written by the daught More...
There are 10 short stories in this collection, and my favourite is, predictably, 'Fiction', which is about a couple whose marriage falls apart. Not much time is spent on the disintegration though; more surprising is the inclusion of the plot of a story written by the daught More...
Jun 17, 2010
Sarah
rated it:
I love short stories, and was excited to finally get around to Alice Munro's "Too Much Happiness: Stories." Although I know the collection was well-reviewed, I hadn't actually read any of the reviews before diving in, and I was naive enough to think that the stories were, indeed, about happiness. In a way, they are, but it's a different, quieter, more dignified happiness. The ten stories involve dark, sometimes tragic, subject matter, and yet despite these tragedies, Munro's characters
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Jun 07, 2010
JM
rated it: 
Nobody can touch her writing. That's undeniable. The difficulty lies in why she is such a "women's" writer, at least to me. She writes like a girl! Yeah, so does Virginia Woolf, so take that as a compliment if you like.
Honestly, this was easy to read and the stories and characters were easy to become. I just felt like, why? Why did she have these situations happen to her characters and why did she bother to write about them? It's not like I demand a lot of action, I just di More...
Honestly, this was easy to read and the stories and characters were easy to become. I just felt like, why? Why did she have these situations happen to her characters and why did she bother to write about them? It's not like I demand a lot of action, I just di More...
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Mar 29, 2010
Kate
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I have been reluctant to return Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness just so I could reread a few before I return it to the library. Like most Munro stories, it deals with everyday women, usually housewives, mothers and daughters, aunts and cousins. Something dark and savage lurks in many of her characters, revealed slowly as her narratives unfold.
Last night I reread my favorite story in the collection, "Child's Play." It is really a haunting story. It is a story of an elderly More...
Last night I reread my favorite story in the collection, "Child's Play." It is really a haunting story. It is a story of an elderly More...
Mar 03, 2010
Sara
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Feb 06, 2010
Tamara
rated it:
Puts into words feelings that you never thought describable. But each story also has a horrifying event that defies description, leaving you feeling a bit unsatisfied.
The namesake story was my least favorite. If you read one story from the collection it should be Child's Play.
Favorite Quotes:
Love. She was glad of it. It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness - how More...
The namesake story was my least favorite. If you read one story from the collection it should be Child's Play.
Favorite Quotes:
Love. She was glad of it. It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness - how More...
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May 26, 2011
Jennifer
rated it:
Something about Munro's writing style really hooks me. It's very clear, lucid prose, free of embellishment, describing things that seem at first very mundane (and often are), but usually when I finish one of her stories I surface from the book dazed and almost gasping, as if the story walloped me right upside the head somehow. They're unflinching, and yet not (usually) despairing: intimate portraits of people getting by.
Stories that especially struck me:
"Dimensions" More...
Stories that especially struck me:
"Dimensions" More...
Jan 20, 2010
Sarah Pi
rated it:
I think there should be a law regarding the inverse relationship between books and movies with "happiness" in the title and the actual happiness allowed the characters. Munro acknowledges that in the excellent story "Free Radicals," in which the protagonist is a reader. "She read modern fiction too. Always fiction. She hated to hear the word "escape" used about fiction. She might have argued, notj ust playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But th
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Jan 08, 2010
Cdrueallen
rated it:
If the function of fiction is to provide maps for human lives, then Alice Munro's collection, Too Much Happiness, is one of the best works of fiction published in 2009. In these stories, Ms. Munro has created an elegant symbol system that marks the paths women take through the dangerous territory of love and friendship. Most of their problems are caused by men, though there are plenty of scheming and possibly evil women who populate these tales. Ms. Munro is an acute and critical observer of the
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Jan 02, 2010
Corinne
rated it:
As much as I love Alice Munro, most of these stories just miss something for me. What I tend to enjoy most about her stories is the way Munro picks a moment in time that completely changes everything for a character--without telling the reader exactly what the ramifications will be. Maybe it's because each of these stories has a similar morbid end that it all become too predictable? In some cases, I almost felt like a less twisted ending would have suited the story better, and the sadness was ad
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Mar 02, 2010
Bruce
rated it:
This is a collection of ten short stories by the Canadian author, Alice Munro. As always, Munro writes beautifully, creating situations of exquisite poignancy, every bit of her work demonstrating not only great sensitivity but consummate craft. Why is it that I often find her stories agonizing to read? Is it because her characters, usually women, seem so fated, so seemingly incapable of breaking out of the lives in which they find themselves, no matter how painful or destructive those lives m
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Jan 02, 2012
Sarah
rated it:
I do love Alice Munro - I think what makes her spectacular as a short story writer is that you feel immediately immersed in her stories. There is no slow warm-up, only to be foiled by a rapid conclusion. Also they have great scope - often, rather than concentrating on a particular vignette in a life, she describes the whole life. She does all those other things that great short story writers do - just the right detail, stopping before she has spelled everything out.
I loved most of t More...
I loved most of t More...
Oct 12, 2011
brian
rated it:
is there another living writer of fiction who, while reading, produces as many of these: 'yes! exactly! a tiny but revelatory detail regarding the human condition i've never considered in such light... and never so precisely expressed!' -- no. there isn't. reading alice munro in the cold months is perfect as alice munro is all chimney-smoke smell and end-of-day melancholy. the goal is to read everything she's written.
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Nov 23, 2011
Tammy
rated it:
This collection of short stories by Alice Munroe is a marvel. The characters in each are subtly and skillfully drawn that I found myself as much in awe of Munroe’s grasp of her craft as in the ability to inhabit the stories themselves. At the end of most I found myself wishing this were not a disparate collection, but a full-length novel where I could voyeuristically continue observing the characters.
In some cases this wish for an extension of the stories stemmed from the fact that I More...
In some cases this wish for an extension of the stories stemmed from the fact that I More...
Nov 03, 2011
‘This might even turn into a funny story that she would tell some day.’
When I picked up this collection of ten short stories by Alice Munro, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. This, courtesy of a reading group, was my first encounter with Ms Munro’s fiction.
After I read the first story, ‘Dimensions’, I put the book down for almost a week. I was not sufficiently optimistic about Doree’s future to be comfortable with the possibility of a new beginning. The More...
When I picked up this collection of ten short stories by Alice Munro, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. This, courtesy of a reading group, was my first encounter with Ms Munro’s fiction.
After I read the first story, ‘Dimensions’, I put the book down for almost a week. I was not sufficiently optimistic about Doree’s future to be comfortable with the possibility of a new beginning. The More...
May 17, 2010
Mitzi
rated it:
I felt like Goldilocks reading this book. It wasn't too obtuse, it wasn't too banal, it was just right. Munro does a great job of delving into her characters, and creating a world for them in just a few sentences. She does a great job of forshadowing just enough that you know what's going to happen without you consciously *knowing*. And most of the time, the plot builds to a satisfying end with just enough intrigue to mull over later. Interestingly, the only story I didn't love was the titl
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Dec 08, 2011
Delphine
rated it: 
Great expectations...but alas. I have to agree with this review:
"This was easy to read and the stories and characters were easy to become. I just felt like, why? Why did she have these situations happen to her characters and why did she bother to write about them? It's not like I demand a lot of action, I just didn't get her choices. Just because you can write beautifully doesn't mean you ought to write beautifully about such things. The situations and the characters didn't see More...
"This was easy to read and the stories and characters were easy to become. I just felt like, why? Why did she have these situations happen to her characters and why did she bother to write about them? It's not like I demand a lot of action, I just didn't get her choices. Just because you can write beautifully doesn't mean you ought to write beautifully about such things. The situations and the characters didn't see More...
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Apr 24, 2010
Jas
rated it:
Another fine collection of stories from Alice Munro - can you expect anything less? The stories in this book follow similar themes to her past books, with a few exceptions. There is a dark side to some of the stories, especially "Child's Play" which I found disturbing, yet oddly memorable.
I also had to re-read the descriptions of the different trees in "Wood" because Alice Munro has the talent of making ordinary settings come alive. One of my favourite sections d More...
I also had to re-read the descriptions of the different trees in "Wood" because Alice Munro has the talent of making ordinary settings come alive. One of my favourite sections d More...
Oct 20, 2011
Katie
rated it:
Alice Munro is one of the great short story writers of our time and her most recent collection does not disappoint. With clarity and a touch of menace her stories leave me bewildered--somehow in a familiar place where something unexpected still finds purchase. This is also the short story writer for the person who reads more novels. Her characters are well-developed in a short space. The only thing that fell flat in this collection was the title story, the last in the book. I loved the idea, and
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Oct 21, 2010
Ji
rated it:
Read the first story and put the book down. I know that I'm probably doing a disservice to this book by not reading any of the other stories and by not putting in more time. I also get that Munro's a good writer.
The first story transmitted Doree's feelings, especially her helplessness and despair, to the reader pretty well. But the letters from Lloyd, how Doree connects again with Lloyd two years after an unspeakable tragedy happened...?? How is it also possible that Doree makes a v More...
The first story transmitted Doree's feelings, especially her helplessness and despair, to the reader pretty well. But the letters from Lloyd, how Doree connects again with Lloyd two years after an unspeakable tragedy happened...?? How is it also possible that Doree makes a v More...
Feb 06, 2010
Jessica
rated it:
Rats, Goodreads just deleted my review. I was a little too proud of it, anyway.
Basically, after waiting for the 40-plus people ahead of me on the library's waiting list, I gobbled Munro's latest collection of ten short stories up in about 48 hours, scolding myself the whole time to slow down and savor. Munro has the unique ability to offer her readers the sort of frantic page-turning one might expect in a James Patterson airport read (not that I would know...) with the sheer grace an More...
Basically, after waiting for the 40-plus people ahead of me on the library's waiting list, I gobbled Munro's latest collection of ten short stories up in about 48 hours, scolding myself the whole time to slow down and savor. Munro has the unique ability to offer her readers the sort of frantic page-turning one might expect in a James Patterson airport read (not that I would know...) with the sheer grace an More...
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Jan 31, 2010
Jessie
rated it:
Reading Munro is always like coming home; the full, inevitable worlds. Not her best collection, but still marvelous; stories you can't stop reading.
Prose here is less lyrical and ponderous than usual Munro prose, but she still has those zingers, her artfulness most apparent in the stories' shaping, what's included and what's left out--she gets the sweep of a life in so few pages. How is it always so effortless with her--how's she able to end a story with "I grew up, and old" More...
Prose here is less lyrical and ponderous than usual Munro prose, but she still has those zingers, her artfulness most apparent in the stories' shaping, what's included and what's left out--she gets the sweep of a life in so few pages. How is it always so effortless with her--how's she able to end a story with "I grew up, and old" More...
Sep 19, 2011
Heidi
rated it:
I feel like I should give this five stars. It is Munro, after all, and the writing is exquisite. Perhaps it's just because they are short stories and I'm not as easily enthralled by the short story as the novel. By the time I'm really into the story, it ends, and then the book is all too easy to put down before beginning another.
Also, despite the title, the book is not a feel-good book, and if there is happiness in these stories, it's not the kind of happiness we tend to think of. The More...
Also, despite the title, the book is not a feel-good book, and if there is happiness in these stories, it's not the kind of happiness we tend to think of. The More...
