'It's how we keep telling ourselves our stories'

“Memory is the way we keep tellingourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different versionof our stories.” – Alice Munro

 

Born in Canada on this date in 1931(she died in May of 2024) Nobel Prize winner Munro is noted for“revolutionizing the architecture of short stories,” especially with hertendency to move forward and backward in time.   Herstories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more thanparade."

 

A frequent theme of Munro’s work,particularly in her early stories like 1971’s Lives of Girls and Women,she focuses on the dilemma of girls coming of age and their relationships with boththeir families and small-town life.  In her later works like Runaway,she shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, women alone, and theelderly.                             

                                       

Winner of the 2009 Man BookerInternational Prize for her lifetime body of work, she also was a three-time winnerof Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction.  Her last short story collection, Dear Life,came out in 2012 just before she was honored with the Nobel Prize.

 “A story is not like a road to follow . . . it’s morelike a house,” Munro said.  “You goinside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling whereyou like and discovering how the rooms and corridors relate to each other; howthe world outside is altered by being viewed from (each of) its windows.”