Alice Munro, Canadian writer and winner of the Prize Nobel of Literature in 2013, He has died at the age of 92and for just over ten years he had been suffering from a process of dementia. She is considered one of the best authors of short stories and stories in English language. This is a review to his life and work as a memory.
Alice Munro
Born in Wingham in 1931 and was the daughter of a farmer and a teacher. With great influence of presbyterian moralism, says that her career began when, as a child, she read The little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen, and he thought that such a good story should not have such a sad ending. So he spent the day thinking about it until he found a better one. That episode could have determined that she ended up dedicating herself to short stories and stories, where she tried the human relations complex and life in small towns that he knew so well.
Regarding his personal life, he lived in Vancouver and from his first marriage he had three daughters. with his first husband set up a bookstore and he began to write stories with the intention of being a novelist when his children grew up and left him more free time. She but she became the queen of that genre that is as seemingly simple as it is really difficult. Then married again and ended up returning to the place of his childhood and distancing himself from the media, although he did not stop writing.
Alice Munro — Work
His stories are usually set in his home province of Ontario and deal with themes such as family, love, memory and the passage of time. And his style is defined by sharpness, precision and way of touching those simple and close stories. In 1968 she published the first volume of short stories, shadow dance, which was followed by the successful collection of stories titled women's lives and then they became almost 20 books, plus a dozen collections of stories that led her to the place she has occupied in Anglo-Saxon literature since she began publishing stories in magazines in 1950.
It received numerous awards and recognitions, for example, in 2005 it won the first edition of the Redonda Island Award, founded by the writer Javier Marías. In 2009 he achieved the Booker and in 2013 he was awarded the Literature Nobel.
Some of his most recognized books are:
Story Collections
- women's lives (1971): His first book, winner of the Governor General's Award and considered a classic of Canadian literature.
- The moons of Jupiter (1982)
- The progress of love (1986)
- youth friendship (1990)
- open secrets (1994)
- Something I wanted to tell you (2001)
- Too much happiness (2009)
- my dear life (2012)
- Who do you think you are? (2013)
- Distance (2018)
- Everything stays at home (2014)
Novela
- The fugitive (2004)
Alice Munro — Selection of fragments
Escape
The piece of paper that Adam-and-Eve had sold him was still in his jacket pocket. When she finally took it out, almost a year later because she hadn't put that jacket back on, she was perplexed and irritated by the words stamped on it.
The road was not easy. The letter to Michigan was returned unopened. Apparently that hospital no longer existed. But Nancy discovered that inquiries could be made, and she made them. There were authorities to whom it was possible to write, records which it was possible to dust off. She didn't give up. She was not willing to admit that the traces had been erased.
In Ollie's case she might be willing to admit it. She had sent a letter to Texada Island: she thought that address would suffice, given the few people who lived there. Any of them would be easy to find. But they returned the letter to her, with three words written on the envelope: "Change of address."
He couldn't bear to open it and reread what he had written. She was sure more than she should.
the love of a generous woman
In the long white house, with its tiled corners, new people now lived. The Shantzes had gone to live in Florida. They sent oranges to my aunts; Ailsa said that those oranges made the ones you bought in Canada disgust you. The new neighbors had built a swimming pool, which was mainly used by their daughters - two beautiful young girls who didn't even look at me when we passed each other on the street - and their boyfriends. The bushes had grown considerably between my aunts' yard and theirs, but I could still see them running and pushing around the pool, their screams, their splashes. I despised his antics because I took life seriously and had a much higher and nobler idea of love. But I would have liked to get your attention anyway. I wish one of them had seen my pale pajamas moving in the dark and actually screamed, thinking I was a ghost.