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The Shining Houses by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Shining Houses” is the second story of Alice Munro’s first short story collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, first published in 1968.
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Miles City, Montana by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Miles City, Montana” is a short story by Alice Munro, and first appeared in the January 14, 1985 edition of The New Yorker.
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A Real Life by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“A Real Life” by Canadian author Alice Munro first appeared in the February 10, 1992 edition of The New Yorker.
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Spaceships Have Landed by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
Spaceships Have Landed is a long short story running over 10,000 words. But after you’ve read it, you’ll feel like you read an entire novel. With perfectly chosen narrative summary and a roving point of view, Alice Munro paints the story of a 1950s town, as experienced by two very different young women united by the timing of their coming-of-age.
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Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Moons of Jupiter” is a short story by Canadian Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro, first published in 1978 during the Voyager expeditions.
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Before The Change by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
It is the end of summer, 1960, and a young woman writes a letter to someone she shortens to ‘R’. She has returned home from the city to her father’s house in rural Canada where he lives with his housekeeper Mrs. Barrie after the death of the narrator’s mother many years ago.
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My Mother’s Dream by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
**UPDATE LATE 2024** After Alice Munro died, we learned about the real ‘open secrets’ (not so open to those of us not in the loop) which dominated the author’s life. We must now find a way to live with the reality that Munro’s work reads very differently after knowing certain decisions she made when faced […]
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Rich As Stink by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
Rich as Stink is a short story by Canadian writer Alice Munro included in the 1998 collection The Love Of A Good Woman. Gaslighting, parentification, spousification, self-objectification, coercive control… People living in 1974 did not have ready access to the language of psychology and found it difficult to describe emotionally abusive relationships, let alone talk […]
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The Children Stay by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Children Stay” is a short story by Alice Munro, published in the collection The Love Of A Good Woman (1998). It’s very difficult to write empathetically about women who leave their husbands and children for another man, especially when it’s purely lust driven rather than depicted as ‘pure love’. This is because mothers are […]
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Goethe and Angela Carter’s Erl-king Short Story Analysis
“The Erl-King” is a short story by Angela Carter based on an old ballad by Goethe, one of the most famous ballads ever told. Carter’s re-visioning doesn’t use the plot from Goethe’s ballad, but borrows some of the atmosphere. Carter inverts the gaze and turns it into something new. As you might expect from Angela […]
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How To Write Like Alice Munro
**UPDATE LATE 2024** After Alice Munro died, we learned about the real ‘open secrets’ (not so open to those of us not in the loop) which dominated the author’s life. We must now find a way to live with the reality that Munro’s work reads very differently after knowing certain decisions she made when faced […]
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Tricks by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
I have a soft spot for short stories about spinsters about town, enjoying their passions in solitary fashion. “Tricks” by Alice Munro calls to mind Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill”, especially after mention of the symbolic scarf: Miss Brill, you may recall, wears a fur. Robin of Munro’s story “Tricks” does not; she is instead disturbed by someone else’s fox scarf…
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Powers by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Powers” is the final story in the Runaway collection by Alice Munro, published 2004. I find this story the most challenging of the lot — as in, what in holy heck was that all about? I’m going to have to write about “Powers” in order to understand it. Here goes my best shot. What can […]
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Trespasses by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Trespasses” is a short story by Canadian author Alice Munro, included in the collection Runaway, published 2006. This piece might challenge everything you’ve learned about how to structure a story. All the parts are there, but not as you’d expect. If Alice Munro had anonymously joined one of my writing critique groups over the years, […]
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Cortes Island by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Cortes Island” is a short story by Alice Munro, included in the 2013 collection The Love Of A Good Woman, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Like another story in this collection, “Jakarta“, the title of this story is set in a place away from where the action takes place. Writers often say that […]