The Progress of Love [Hardcover]

Alice Munro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 1986

Alice Munro, who received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her latest collection of stories, The Love of a Good Woman, is widely acknowledged as a modern master of the short story. In this earlier collection, she demonstrates all of those strengths that have won her so many literary accolades.

A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents. A young man, remembering a terrifying childhood incident, wrestles with the responsibility he has always felt for his younger brother. In these and other stories Alice Munro proves once again a sensitive and compassionate chronicler of our times. Drawing us into the most intimate corners of ordinary lives, she reveals much about ourselves, our choices, and our experiences of love.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The characters in these 11 short stories have hearts that are startled or weighed down by the responsibilities of love, or which are gnawed by hidden hate and cruelty. PW wrote that Munro offers "a freshness of vision, a breadth of sympathy and a wide-ranging imagination."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A prize-winning Canadian author, Munro has been praised for such works as The Moons of Jupiter ( LJ 5/15/83) and The Beggar Maid ( LJ 10/1/79). Her new collection of 11 stories thoughtfully explores the themes of self-knowledge and love. Families, friends, eccentrics, loversthe characters all bear the marks and burdens of unpredictable individualism and humanity. Girlish friendship and imaginings end in betrayal, estrangement, and self-revelation over the years in "Jesse and Meribeth." A small-town nurse in "Eskimo" unveils layers of female obligation and the complexities of love when trying to befriend a young girl on a plane to Tahiti. "A Queer Streak" has about it the satisfying subtlety, wholeness, and horror of legend. An accomplished collection. Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; 1st edition (September 20, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 077106666X
• ISBN-13: 978-0771066665
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,006,918 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Injured people, small lights of happiness., September 2, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Progress of Love (King Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Alice Munro is such a fine writer that she can take some fifty-odd characters over the course of a story collection and make them seem like various aspects of a complex and sensitive personality. These stories are careful and elegant, and writers will note Munro's idiosyncratically beautiful use of unexpected adjectives. But even without such wonderful writing, her stories would speak for themselves: her characters live life directly, simply, and often painfully, and they have more feeling than they can express. Munro does it for them. This collection includes "The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink," one of the most moving stories I can imagine. Read it and weep.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very solid introduction, August 31, 2001

By 

Philip Huang (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Progress of Love (Paperback)

Mid-period Munro, when she began in earnest to explore a talent for expansiveness. The title story is as fine as anything she's written. The final pages reap deliciously what the story's juxtaposed timelines and plots have set up. You walk away from the story shaking your head, sighing, aching. Not as fine a collection as The Moons of Jupiter, also out of the same period in her career, but still hard to beat by another writer in the medium. It seems short stories have waited for Munro for too long, and we are too privileged to be readers in her lifetime.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, May 16, 2001

By 

Mike Vachow (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Progress of Love (Paperback)

Alice Munro is, by my reckoning, the greatest short story writer of our time. Her collection, The Progress of Love, is ample proof. I recommend her work with trepidation to aspiring short story writers because her writing is intimidatingly exquisite. Charles Baxter or Lorrie Moore could profit from a session in the batting cage with Munro, but for most everybody else, it would be like taking your Tee-Ball Leaguer for a hitting tutorial with Ted Williams.

What's so good about Munro's writing? Foremost is her precision. The center of the short story writer's craft is economy. It's very difficult to find a word that doesn't advance both story and theme in Munro's work. The reader finds himself stopping to ponder passages not because they're opaque but because they are so powerfully rendered and so intricately woven. I've taught "Monsieur Les Deux Chapeaux" for seven years, and Ross's moment on the bridge never fails to transport me and my students. I don't expect to find an end to my thought about this moment or the story itself. It will unquestionably remain a short story by which I measure all others.