Alice Munro, DEAR LIFE

We were seven this time around Amanda’s table: Amanda, Cynthia, Helen, Phoebe, newcomer Thibault, Michel and Maren.

The book had a very positive reception; only Michel liked it less, but we did not really get to know why – or he didn’t get the chance amongst all the praising and the lively discussion... ;-)

Other Munro books were even more praised; “Dear Life” was understood as a rather loose collection of some short stories quickly set up to respond to an end of life review.

I myself was somewhat afraid – and, as we learned, I was not the only one – that it would be difficult to discuss short stories. So many characters, changing stories and perspectives... How to cover this all in one discussion? A novel lets one follow the characters and their developments over many pages. How can one relate in the time of a few pages to story and characters? But there was no fear necessary. As Amanda put it: Alice Munro is considered, amongst authors, as one of the best living writers; her short stories are as rich as a novel can be. We saw that ourselves. Rarely have personal stories surfaced as often as this time during a book discussion. We were touched by one or another phrase incrusted itself in our minds, and the discussion started.

Caroline’s splendid written contribution (get well soon!) made a beautiful jumping-off place.

·       I was very conscious of the importance of houses/homes in these short stories, and particularly their demolition or conversion. Is this a recurring theme in her work, a symbol or an autobiographical allusion?
·       The mother/daughter relationships seem, at the very least, tense. One assumes this is autobiographical but I haven’t been able to find out. Or maybe there is a tendency to assume, although she is careful to say the opposite, that everything is autobiographical in this possibly final work. I see her eldest daughter has written a book about her relationship to her mother, which would give an interesting slant.
·       I liked her portrayal of laid-back, hippy husbands/partners (particularly the one she suspects of leaving her for an old flame). Although she doesn’t identify with the stepfather of the girl who drowns, who is by his own admission too stoned to go and help and then refuses to have anything to do with his biological child, she seems to be saying that he did at least live by his principles. One gets the feeling that Munro admires this; that she would like to do the same but doesn’t quite dare. In the final story, she does achieve this, however: “I did not go home for my mother's last illness or for her funeral. I had two small children and nobody in Vancouver to leave them with. We could barely have afforded the trip, and my husband had a contempt for formal behavior, but why blame it on him? I felt the same.”  

Phoebe disagreed in some measure with the last point. To her, the important phrase is I had two small children; the narrator chooses to consider their needs (as her own mother did not), even over those of her mother (in reaction to the mother). Phoebe made a parallel with the death of Père Goriot, when he is abandoned on his deathbed by his adored daughters, who, through the way he brought them up, must fight for the future of their own children.

A gender discussion also for “Gravel”: Is the narrator a boy or a girl, brother or sister of Caro? It was intriguing: The interpretation and reception depended on the gender of the reader. Women tended to read the stories from a girl’s point of view, men from a boy’s.

We came at several moments back to the story of the TB clinic (“Amundsen”). What could women do and expect at that time? How free were they to decide for their own?

Conclusion: We need as one of the next assignments an Edith Wharton novel! And another meeting with short stories!

Also much discussed was the story "Train": It tells the life from a men's perspective. We discussed if his difficulty with intimacy was the origin of his strange relation to people around him or did his performing problem become an intimacy problem.

Phoebe & Maren