The New Yorker: "Leaving Maverly" by Alice Munro

November 28, 2011: "Leaving Maverly" by Alice Munro
Maybe I'm just not in the mood for a Munro story, but thisone leaves me cold. Like many of her stories, this one covers several years—provingthat short stories don't have to focus on a short period of time. The problemwith trying to fit a long period of time into a short story, however, is thatit is difficult to achieve much depth. The reader is always skimming thesurface, it seems to me, and unless the occasional dips into the water aresustained, the author risks losing the reader altogether. Which, for me,happened here.
The story is about Ray, the night policeman in a small town,and a young girl, Leah. The girl is from a very strict household—one in whichthe wife and children aren't allowed to leave the house—but she is givenpermission by her father to take a job as ticket taker in a theater (as long asshe doesn't watch or even listen to the films). But she needs an escort to walkher home on Saturday nights, and Ray performs that duty. Ray, meanwhile, ismarried to Isabel, who left her husband to marry him. But she developspericarditis and is often too weak to do anything. When Leah disappears, Rayjoins the search, but the girl isn't found because, in fact, she ran off andmarried the minister's son.
And so on—Isabel gets sicker, Leah's marriage goes bad, andeventually, years later, they meet again in the hospital in another city. And maybe they'llget together, and maybe they won't, but I don't think I care. The story is so muchon the surface that I don't engage with any of the characters.
I'd be interested to know how others reacted to this one. I'ma fan of Munro, but not this story.