Great portraits of humanity. I love Munro! Her characters are unexpected, interesting, empathic, and wonderful. I love her. Very recommended.

I must have read this more than 10 years ago, but as I re-read these short stories, I wasn't surprised to find that I easily remembered each and everyone. They all came back with overtones of my earlier reading in comparison to how I was responding to them now. The book of course hasn't changed - what has changed is me, and I suppose my reading requirements. I remember reading these stories with a kind of squeamish satisfaction - similar to when you pass an accident, driving slowly to absorb the...

Kinda boring. Well-written, but each tale of domesticity and humdrum-ity fell flat for me after the first two stories. Just too much husbands and wives and domestic ho-hum. I understand there's plenty under the surface there, but I GOT BORED, YO. I actually stopped reading with 100 pages left. Onward!

1992 notebook: Fantastic. Particularly Five Points with the salt mine and the dead machinery entombed there - below the lake. The shop with the Polish girl who paid men to have sex with her and the walk along the road high heel-less; and Wigtime - the school friend who married the lecherous bus driver and banished his mysterious wife. Lovely, lovely stuff.

Coming back to Alice Munro - she speaks to me in an entirely new way, now. Stories of adult daughters and mothers and sickness and grief; infidelities and eccentricities; stories of aging - the "sardonic droop of defeat" (Differently, p. 218). Stories of women's friendships. Stories of how life happens to people, and what they become when it does. All perfectly realized, quiet and wise, perfectly told and told completely. Captured into a form over which Munro exerts complete control, making it a...

I have a new best friend. Best of all, she has written a lot of books. Not only were these great short stories but there was that bit of carry over here and there that let me construct the locale, the town, the lake, the salt mine beneath. Lake Huron is mentioned. But the clue finally came up about a road, that let me know what bit of Ontario I was visiting. And I've been there. Not for long, but I have been there; the extra reward that comes from good short stories.

This lady stuns me in so many ways. She offers lessons in subtlety. Yes, brilliance can be quiet. Munro takes the past and modernizes it, rereads it with a more savvy and uncertain lens, with paradox. Themes of female sexuality, of desire, of deception (self and other), of (dis)connection, of still-present pasts, permeate this collection. No one escapes his/her history or historical contexts; individuals’ lives do not play out in a vacuum; generations are different, but it’s still complicated an...

Munro never disappoints. These are all wonderful stories. Though, plot-wise, my life is nothing like the stories here, I am left wondering after each story how Munro knows my inner life so well. Her grasp of human nature, her evocation of the world of her characters: all of it is astounding. The more I read of Munro, the more I am convinced of her genius.

Small town southern Ontario settings, ordinary people going about nothing more spectacular than living, loving, working, dying; but Alice Munro turns the seemingly mundane into glowing, jewel-like tales that reveal the ‘shameless, marvellous, shattering absurdity’ of life. Each story leaves you faintly breathless, full of wonder at how she can so smoothly pull back the curtain, reveal the essence, the core of being. What I particularly loved in this, her seventh collection, first published in 19...

A good collection of ten engaging short stories about ordinary people. I liked all the stories. The characters are concisely described. The events in each story are simple and interesting. For example, a widow visits where her husband stayed in Scotland during the war and catches up with the characters he associated with. A woman escapes from a difficult marriage only to find herself in an equally difficult affair. A number of the stories are about characters reflecting on their teenage years an...

Happy to tag this as read — I'm always going to be reading Alice Munro. I had a grand plan of reading Alice Munro's work in order of publication date. I did start at the beginning, and read her first book, and I skipped around this book, since I am too wild to read short stories in order. So I did read this one, too, and reread some of it.My grand plan is never going to happy. Newer books call to me, from other authors and Alice too. But I just have to say: I love Alice Munro!! ❤️

Wow, what a ride.Disquieting. Merciless. Thought-provoking.Two sisters, one man. Much misery.Men and women and their ascribed roles moving from generation to generation and leaving track on their children. Changing the pattern requires an effort that not all women are ready to make. Do we get any choice at making effective decisions about what our life is going to be like?Religion, society and fear become the worst enemies towards emancipation. There is no time to hesitate, because life releases...

Fran Lebowitz on Toni Morrison: “She’s one of my best friends, and she is the only wise person I’ve ever known. I know lots of very smart people, but I only know one wise person.” I listened to Fran say this a while ago now, but it stuck. There are very intelligent writers, who craft these stories and novels packed with strong feelings of empathy and compassion for how and why people behave, and live, as they do. There are masterful works, humanist or not, formally inventive and innovative, by b...

Although academics have made a career from the oeuvre of Alice Munro - AM: Paradox and Parallel; AM: Art and Gender; AM: writing her lives; AM: Mothers and Other Clowns; etc etc etc.... - she does not need to be laboured over. In the case of this book, take short story writer Alan Beard's five line review. A line for each star. I agree. It's an especially good collection.Rather than elaborate unnecessarily on that, I am merely going to note that I more or less found myself on the page in the sto...

Alice Munro at this point is a favourite. One of the writers –like Morrison, Baldwin, Proust, Tolstoy, Woolf among others, I can always expect to leave me marvelled, impressed and feeling a sense of loss parting with her work.This collection of short stories was no different. Ten stories, each exploring the past, showing that the past isn't always some far-off place we can easily look back on, as though it's an antique object we raise and peer at, but also an ever-present and even intrusive part...

Alice Munro -- master of the short story, winner of the Nobel -- why did these stories leave me stone cold? Could it be that I'm not much into the politics of sex and how they play out between lovers, husbands and wives, and best friends? No. That's a theme with universal appeal. And the writing is seamless -- I have no issue there. The problem is, once you peel off the paper and ribbon, there's no soul underneath. These stories are written with a dispassionate eye that mostly skims the surface....

Just loved this! Another queen of the short story to add to my forever reading list.

Alice Munro's short stories are always a delight to read, and Friend of My Youth is no exception. In almost every collection of hers I have read, there is a line or two of description that makes me start out of my chair and realize, yes, that perfectly describes something I have been feeling.Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here. In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smor...

Reading this was a long time in coming. The story "Meneseteung" that I read five years ago in the Best American Stories of the 20th Century was actually the first Alice Munro that I had come across and then over the years countless people--mainly writers--have mentioned her as a favorite. This stands to reason: Munro is a writer's writer. She spins tales; she writes real stories. Yet they have a modernism and sophistication that transcends time, place, trends, gender... everything. Her style rem...

Very psychosexual