Open Secrets: Stories [Paperback]

Alice Munro (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 7, 1995

In these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada.

"Open Secrets is a book that dazzles with its faith in language and in life."--New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition edition (November 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679755624
• ISBN-13: 978-0679755623
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #290,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Loosely connected short stories mine both the history of a small Canadian town and the complex personal histories of Munro's protagonists.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For her newest gathering, Canadian novelist/short story writer Munro (Friends of My Youth, LJ 3/15/90) has collected another eight stories of women's lives. Most of the stories are set in and around the town of Carstairs, Alberta, where the Doud family is the biggest employer. Munro is a master at developing the details that bring her characters to life: In "Carried Away," librarian Louisa responds to the increasingly intimate correspondence of a World War II soldier, who fails to contact her when he returns home. In "A Wilderness Station," set in the 1850s when Carstairs is an outpost, orphaned Annie McKillop sets out for an uncertain future as the mail-order bride of a homesteader. These luminous, full-bodied stories will be widely enjoyed.
Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition edition (November 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679755624
• ISBN-13: 978-0679755623
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #290,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven previous books.During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the W.H. Smith Prize, the National Book Circle Critics Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Lannan Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Rea Award for the Short Story. In Canada, she has won the Governor General's Award, the Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Libris Award.Alice Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton, Ontario, and Comox, British Columbia.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I've read this at least three times. October 23, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

It astounds me that some people find Munro's prose boring; hypnotic is the word I'd use. These stories aren't talk shows or soap operas or "Oprah stories" with heartwarming messages at the end. What they're about, in my view, is the strange and slippery role that time and memory play in our lives, and in that sense they join the tradition of Proust and Wordsworth. Munro is fascinated by experiences of disorientation or dislocation in which one no longer knows quite who one is, and by our stubborn attempts to make those moments fit into the narratives of our lives. But she also knows that those are the experiences that allow us to change, to get somewhere: the moments when we risk all because we have nothing to lose. Her small towns are about as folksy and harmless as Twin Peaks, because gaps keep opening in the dull fabric of their inhabitants' existence. Read beneath the surface, don't be fooled by the prosy, matter-of-fact tone, and you'll find that these are some weird and compelling stories indeed.

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want a story spoon fed to you, go see a movie! July 26, 2002

By Jay Stevens

Format:Paperback

If you want to know exactly what's going on, if you want to get all the nuances the first time around, if you want to be fed a simple little story, go see a movie. Don't read this book.

If, however, you enjoy reading, if you like puzzling over plots and taking notes, if you like realistic characters with realistic problems, if you like words and sentences, if you like books...read "Open Secrets."

Munro is "great literature." I suspect that in a few hundred years, Hemingway stories will have withered away under scrutiny and our past century will belong to names like Tobias Wolff, Grace Paley, and Alice Munro. She really is that good. And I think it points to something problematic about the quality of primary education Americans receive that a college student would find Munro's stories too complicated for an undergraduate literature class.

And while I'm ranting...

What is it with disparaging a book - comparing it to a talk-show - because it's written by a woman, with women characters doing womanly things? If a book is about women, does that disqualify it from being great lit? Does there have to be a war complete with trenches before it wins accolades? I also shy away from the term, "women's literature." Why categorize it so? Some people create a new category of literature to put their women into, so that they don't have to defend them from the pinheads who mindlessly laud the "classics" tooth and nail. Forget it! Viriginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and Alice Monro are great authors and compete against any male writer...

Anyway...

"Open Secrets" is an amazing book. Right off the top, she hits us with "Carried Away," where a small-town librarian falls in love with an unseen correspondent, only to have him die in a factory accident before she ever meets him.... Of course, that's where the story really starts. Plagued by longing, the librarian marries another man. Years later, she runs into her deceased lover who introduces himself to her for the first time...or is it really him?

It's a complex story, peopled with multi-dimensional characters. Love is at the heart of the story, and "Carried Away" manages to both disparage and glorify the strength of that peculiar emotion.

I'd go on, but suffice to say, the stories in "Open Secrets" are engaging, complex, interesting, and great. Read more ›

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Found treasure March 4, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I don't recognize Munro's work in the reviews (editorial and customer) I've read here. Are these stories about women? Are they heavy and soporific? Not in my view. For the most part, I see loving, humorous looks at a piece of geography and its inhabitants, stories which are beautifully written, tightly woven, relaxed, and full of delicious discoveries about people and places. Lots of short stories end with a bang and then they are... over. Not Munro's. Hers never glib, never lazy. They are daring, warming, readable and re-rereadable.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Whole Lives Packed into 30-50 Pages July 2, 2006

By Kyle Minor VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The best story in this collection is "Carried Away," and it, like many of the others, jumps around in time, and from character to character, revealing slowly what exactly it might be about, and then about-facing and revealing that it is about something else entirely, and then about-facing again, then again, until, finally, on the last page, one realizes that the story itself has been modeled after the very complexity of any group of lives as they move among one another, never quite knowing one another's whole story, or their own.

I've never read another writer quite like Alice Munro, and I don't expect I will anytime soon. This book is so its own that it resists the capsule review entirely, and must be experienced on its own terms, story by story.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Open secrets is food for the soul!. March 3, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

In "Open Secrets", Munroe tends to delve deep beneath the surface of women's lives. The stories contain intimate descriptions of feelings that many women try to hide, or even deny. The stories are classified as being "short", however the emotions that are brought forth through these words tell a tale that may soothe the soul for a lifetime. In "A Real Life", Dorrie is depicted as a sort of wild woman who shoots rabbits for food and fur, yet still remains dignified; in "Open Secrets", Maureen is a woman who marries her much older husband because she truly loves him, despite his stroke, but does he love her; finally, in "The Albanian Virgin", Charlotte and her strange husband Gjurdhi are presented, both live eccentric lives and leave a distinct impression on those that they meet. "Open Secrets" is a book made for women who want to explore their souls, and are not afraid to find what lies within. Once again, Alice Munroe has truly captured what is is to be "woman"!