Alice Munro (Contemporary World Writers) [Paperback]

Coral Ann Howells (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1998 | Series: Contemporary World Writers

Alice Munro is Canada’s greatest short story writer. This book, the first full length study of her work published in Britain, explores the appeal of Munro’s fictions of small-town Canadian life with their precise attention to social surfaces and their fascination with local gossip and scandal. This is a world of open secrets, and Howells highlights Munro’s distinctive storytelling methods which combine the familiar and the unfamiliar, slipping between realism and fantasy to make visible what is usually hidden within everyday life. These are women’s narratives, full of silent female knowledge--of female bodies, love stories and romantic fantasies as well as female casualties. Munro takes up the traditional subjects of women’s fiction through her stories’ significantly female plots, stories of entrapment and escape attempts, where secrecy and silence become strategies of resistance. Munro’s enthusiasm for the work of other women writers from Emily Brontë and L. M. Montgomery to Eudora Welty is emphasized as Munro continues to experiment with the short story form, creating worlds which are both "touchable and mysterious."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Coral Ann Howells is Professor of English and Canadian Literature at the University of Reading.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Manchester University Press (October 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719045592
• ISBN-13: 978-0719045592
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,539,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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