Open Secrets - Hardcover

Alice Munro

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771066996 ISBN 13: 9780771066993

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

Open Secrets, Alice Munro’s eighth book, consists of eight matchless stories, each one as rich as a full novel. All of them provide compulsive reading – and rewarding re-reading.

“Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from a person you don’t know and that doesn’t remember your name.” These intriguing words begin a letter dated 1917 to the Librarian in Carstairs, Ontario (the heart of “Alice Munro Country”). The letter sweeps us away into a world of secrets and revelations where nothing – not even a courtship by letter that leads, over time, to a solid marriage – is as it originally seems.

The Ontario stories range from “A Wilderness Station,” which gives an account of an 1852 tree-felling accident and sheds light on the harsh life of the pioneers, all the way to the present, where family names known to us appear again in a world of TV shows and snowmobiles.

Just as the stories range back and forth in time, they also travel far to distant settings. Much of “The Albanian Virgin” is set in a remote mountain area where a Canadian tourist in the 1920s is captured by bandits; her tale of escape is comforting to a Victoria bookseller escaping from her own former life. “The Jack Randa Hotel” brings a deserted wife in cold pursuit to Australia, which leads to another intriguing letter. “Dear Mrs. Thornaby, It has come to my attention that you are dead...”

Things that cannot be explained happen here. In the title story a lawyer’s wife has a flash of insight – illogical, unprovable and terrifying – into the fate of a missing teenager; in another, the appearance of a long-dead visitor reveals the grip of a former love. Yet the true magic lies in the way that Alice Munro makes everything here – unexpected marriages, elopements, acts of sudden vengeance – unfold with the ease of the inevitable. This is the mark of a great writer, and it is stamped on every page of this book.

About this title

Review:

She is our Chekhov, and is going to outlast most of her contemporaries.
Cynthia Ozick
Brilliant at evoking life s diversity and unpredictability, [Alice Munro is] an unrivalled chronicler of human nature.
"The Sunday Times"
An Alice Munro story zooms effortlessly through time zones, spans generations and offers up more detail and description than do many full-length contemporary novels.
"Maclean" "s"
She is the best fiction writer in North America.
"The Vancouver Sun
"
Praise from fellow writers:
Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does. Jhumpa Lahiri
She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion. Jonthan Franzen
The authority she brings to the page is just lovely. Elizabeth Strout
She s the most savage writer I ve ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive. Jeffery Eugenides
Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can. Julian Barnes
She is a short-story writer who reimagined what a story can do. Loorie Moore
There s probably no one alive who s better at the craft of the short story. Jim Shepard
A true master of the form. Salman Rushdie
A wonderful writer. Joyce Carol Oates"

"She is our Chekhov, and is going to outlast most of her contemporaries."
-Cynthia Ozick

"Brilliant at evoking life's diversity and unpredictability, [Alice Munro is] an unrivalled chronicler of human nature."
-The Sunday Times

"An Alice Munro story zooms effortlessly through time zones, spans generations and offers up more detail and description than do many full-length contemporary novels."
-Maclean's

"She is the best fiction writer in North America."
-The Vancouver Sun

Praise from fellow writers:

"Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does." --Jhumpa Lahiri

"She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion." --Jonthan Franzen

"The authority she brings to the page is just lovely." --Elizabeth Strout

"She's the most savage writer I've ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive." --Jeffery Eugenides

"Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can."--Julian Barnes

"She is a short-story writer who...reimagined what a story can do." --Loorie Moore

"There's probably no one alive who's better at the craft of the short story." --Jim Shepard

"A true master of the form." --Salman Rushdie

"A wonderful writer." --Joyce Carol Oates

Book Description:

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**

An illuminating collection from one of the most celebrated story writers of our time

About this edition

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0771066996
• ISBN 13: 9780771066993
• Binding: Hardcover