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The Love Of A Good Woman by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Love Of A Good Woman” by Alice Munro is the title story in the collection which won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2013. It’s a long short story — about 70 pages. We might even call it a novella, though let’s just go with this: The title story of Alice Munro’s collection, The Love…
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Deep Holes by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Deep Holes” is a short story by Alice Munro. You can find it in the June 30 2008 edition of The New Yorker. I’m very much reminded of Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer and the real life of Christopher McCandless. But “Deep Holes” is not the story of the son — it’s the story…
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Free Radicals by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
My reading of “Free Radicals” by Alice Munro (2008) is highly metaphorical. To me, this is a story about the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, and the new vulnerability older women feel when their male partner dies before them. Read literally, though, and this is the story of one woman’s brush with a serial murdering intruder…
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Fiction by Alice Munro, Nuanced Infidelity Short Story Analysis
“Fiction” is a short story by Alice Munro (2009). From the title itself we might expect it to be metafictional. Sure enough, there are constant reminders to consider the role of fiction in our lives. I will tell you everything, and if I don’t tell you it means I don’t trust you or I have…
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Passion by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Passion” is a short story by Alice Munro, published 2004 in The New Yorker. This story has much in common with “What Is Remembered“. An elderly woman looks back to when she was young, in a vulnerable psychological state. In both, the younger woman gets into a car with a ravishing bad-boy doctor, contrasting against…
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What Is Remembered by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“What Is Remembered” by Alice Munro appears in the print edition of the February 19, 2001, issue of The New Yorker. It was also published in the collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Looking back as an old lady, this short story focuses on several days across one young woman’s life in which she hooks up…
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Alice Munro, Queenie & Coercive Control
One remarkable thing about Alice Munro: her ability to see aspects of psychology which only drew public attention decades later. In “The Bear Came Over The Mountain” we have a beautiful character study of a philandering man and, his self-justification for wrong-doing and what has since been called sexual solipsism. In “Queenie” Munro paints a…
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The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Bear Came Over The Mountain” is one of the 25 Alice Munro Stories You Can Read Online Right Now. (There’s a possible paywall.) Sarah Polley adapted this short story for film. The film is called Away From Her. This story was first published in The New Yorker (December 27, 1999 and January 3rd, 2000). THE TITLE OF…
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Silence by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Silence” is a short story by Alice Munro, one of three in a triptych about a woman called Juliet. The first are “Chance” and “Soon“. All three are published in the Runaway collection (2004). [“Silence”] brings to the foreground a theme that runs through many stories by Alice Munro—the role of silence within the network…
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Runaway by Alice Munro Short Story Short Story Analysis
“Runaway” is the first short story of Alice Munro’s 2004 collection. It was also published in The New Yorker, where you can read it online. “Runaway” makes for a great mentor text for the following reasons: Nuance of human motivations. The desire is at the ‘complex’ end of the spectrum — our main character doesn’t…
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I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen Short Story Analysis
“I Stand Here Ironing” is a 1950s short story by American feminist and activist author Tillie Olsen (1912 – 2007). This is one of those stories which will likely hit differently if you’re a parent, especially a mother.
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Click Clack the Rattle Bag by Neil Gaiman Analysis
“Click Clack the Rattle Bag” is a short Halloween story by British author Neil Gaiman. The author first published it on in 2012 as part of All Hallow’s Read.
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Gravity by David Leavitt Short Story Analysis
“Gravity” is a short story by David Leavitt, born 1961. I’m reading it in The Oxford Book of American Short Stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates (1992), though it was first published in 1990 in Leavitt’s A Place I’ve Never Been collection. This gay writer had his first collection published at the age of twenty-three…
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Heat by Joyce Carol Oates Short Story Analysis
“Heat” is a short story by American author Joyce Carol Oates, and an interesting example of omniscient first person narration.
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The Symbolism Of Trees In Stories
Trees in storytelling are symbolically interesting. Some trees have unusual characteristics (distinctive foliage, unusual flowering patterns). These are the trees most heavily mined for their symbolic meaning across culture and therefore narrative.