Word: munro
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Despite Munro’s clear attempts to move outside her comfort zone—even making one story’s narrator a man—the stories of “Too Much Happiness” still firmly belong in Munro Land. And despite subject matter that includes a fair amount of sex, drugs, and violence, her stories still read with the same quiet calm, so much so that it often takes a couple minutes for the full weight of the subject matter to sink...
...Munro Land is a world of characters that are entirely respectable, but live just out of view of the people we may read about in the newspapers. They aren’t people who are going anywhere in particular. They have picked ordinary professions—woodworking is popular, featured in three of her stories—and retired to small towns in Canada. There, they grapple with the same issues that much more angst-ridden writers labor over—only with less fanfare...
This is an admirable and refreshing way to look at life’s dramas. “Dimensions,” the first story in “Too Much Happiness,” could easily be ripped from the headlines of a tabloid. Nevertheless, Munro manages to tell the story of a woman whose husband has murdered her children as if it were an unexceptional event. Munro includes chilling, yet matter of fact details of the woman’s relationship with her husband such as, “she was even allowed to laugh with...
...Munro emphasizes the ordinary to such a degree that the fact that her stories portray the extraordinary almost slips by unnoticed. Though on the surface her women seem to lead predictable lives, the situations they face have a subtle element of the supernatural that is much scarier as a result of how detached her tone remains throughout...
...scene, a shy college girl goes for dinner at the house of her roommate’s strange benefactor. Upon entering, she is told, “Here is where you leave your clothes.” Without missing a beat Munro writes, “Don’t worry, you won’t be cold. The house is well heated throughout.” Because both lines are uttered in the same casual manner, the expectation for her to strip seems almost as natural as the assumption that she would take off her coat. In moments like...