Alice Munro (b. Canada 1931-2024) is one of the most honored and revered writers of our time. Among her many accolades ar the Nobel Prize in Literature (2013) and the Man Booker International Prize (2009). She is considered one of the finest writer of short stories and her collection RUNAWAY received the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (2004). The stories in RUNAWAY all share her skill for investing the reader into her characters and their world. Her clear, descriptive prose create female heroines that feel real and self-reliant, although in the lead story "Runaway" a wife's brief sojourn to leave an unhappy marriage ends abruptly with a change of heart. It is the elder woman who is the central character and retains a steely resolve when confronted with the brutish husband. The experiences in both women's lives are felt by the reader which is one of Munroe's writing gifts. Another pleasure from her reading is the surprising whimsy that propels many of her female characters. There's a sense of adventure and thrill to what will happen next and a calming sense that everything will turn out as intended. You can argue that men are delegated to the women in her stories but they too are fully drawn characters whom we get to know and understand. The setting of the stories in RUNAWAY stretches from the present to earlier in the 20th C and she navigates the landscapes of the eras in her stories which can traverses decades within a story. The final story "Powers" differs from her other stories in what may be her swan song. The narrator is disjointed and interrupted by a "decisive person" who may be a caretaker or spouse. It may also indicate her backing away from her writing which has brought so much pleasure to this reader. Monro did stop writing after RUNAWAY was published. As with all her elegant stories and novels, Munro has runaway with my imagination and awe for everything she has ever written.
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