'She would hate to think that she had gone after Ladner because he was rude and testy and slightly savage, with the splotch on the side of his face that shone like metal in the sunlight coming through the trees. Bea provides some brilliant insights into sexual relationships, especially when she meets a rugged loner of a man and falls for him.

In Vandals we are introduced to Bea, a rather vain woman who prides herself on her ability to catch the eye of men.

It's like she lets us see her characters from one perspective and then suddenly brings in a new perspective to turn everything on its head. First of all, her stories always contain more than one story. It's called Vandals and epitomises Munro's method and genius. In fact, the last story is particularly haunting. All eight stories are equally inspired and compelling. The best ones are positioned early on and then towards the end there's a couple of rather uninspired fillers. Munro! Am I to read everything that you've written now?Ĭollections of short stories often follow a similar qualitative pattern. You won't ever be able to get enough.ĭamn it, Ms. or more like mutton and potatoes, given the sparse locale.Īnd you won't have enough. None of this passion has to do with the length of a story, it has to do with the writing and the storytelling.Īnd the sublime writing and storytelling here go together like peanut butter and jelly. Larry McMurtry broke all of his damn pens writing prequels so fans would stop cherry-bombing his windows.Īlmost as soon as Elizabeth Strout presented fans with more Olive in the sequel Olive, Again, ungrateful fans like me could only stamp their angry feet and demand WHERE'S THE PREQUEL? After 945 pages of Lonesome Dove, readers wanted more, more, and more of Gus McCrae. When a character is written well, you can NEVER get enough of them. That you're not going to invest in 50 pages of something only to have a new story suddenly taken away from you. Please, do not cross your arms over your chest, stubbornly protesting that you can't read short stories because you aren't given enough time to know the characters.

Open secrets alice munro analysis