Yes, I know Alice Munro is one of the most successful story-tellers in Canada and, yes, I know she is extremely talented and profound. Even so, her writing has never really appealed to me; I have always found it tedious, unrelatable and melodramatic. But with all the buzz and praise surrounding Munro's newest collection, Too Much Happiness, I figured I'd give it a try like a good Canadian.
In the story "Face" , Munro writes: "In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places." The idea of place forms a central theme of this collection as characters connect their surroundings to life-changing and often terribly dark events such as a freak accident, a home invasion and an extreme case of childhood cruelty.
Out of the ten stories, I really enjoyed four. "Dimensions," "Fiction," "Wenlock Edge" and "Free Radicals" all engaged my attention and featured strong, creative women triumphing in difficult (and often creepy) circumstances. The other stories were more or less consistent with my general evaluation of Munro's work: dry and irrelevant. Unfortunately, I felt that the worst mistake of the book was the disjointed and extraneous title story, "Too Much Happiness," which is based on the real life of Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky.
Ultimately, the collection did confirm my appreciation of Munro though she definitely doesn't sit among my favourites. I guess I'm just not Canadian enough...
