Munro, Alice. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
Reason read: Munro’s birth month is in July. Read in her honor.
Munro has a way with words, as everyone knows. Here are four words I never thought I would see stitched together, “bug-eyed pickle ass”. Go figure.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a collection of short stories with a common theme: relationships:
- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – a childish prank backfires.
- Floating Bridge – a woman deals with positive news concerning her cancer.
- Family Furnishings – a college student learns about a secret her aunt was keeping.
- Comfort – the suicide of a husband.
- Nettles – childhood taunts.
- Post and Beam – when a house is more than a house.
- What Is Remembered – the memory of an affair with a pilot lingers long after the romance has died.
- Queenie – A sister’s abandonment.
- The Bear Came Over the Mountain – An adultery gets his comeuppance.
Lines I really liked, “Her teeth were crowded to the front of her mouth as if they were ready for an argument” (p 3), “See the conquering hero comes” (p 125), “A stealthy, considering, almost married glance, its masquerade and its bland intimacy arousing to those who were after all not married” (p 233), and “As if he dared anybody to breathe while he was in there” (p 252).
Author fact: Munro has won a bunch of awards for her writing including the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Book trivia: I have six different Munro books to read on my list. I have already read Friend of My Youth and The Love of a Good Woman.
Nancy said: Pearl said Munro is among the authors who have “distinctly evoked sense of place that distinguishes Canadian fiction” (Book Lust, p 50).
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Canadian Fiction” (p 50).
~*LunaSea*~ 