I read a short story collection named ”Too Much Happiness” by Alice Munro, the collection was published in 2009. Munro is a 82-year-old Canadian short story writer and she won the Literature Nobel prize in 2013 (”master of the contemporary short story”.)
Book consist of ten short stories ( Demensions , Fiction, Wenlock Edge, Deep-Holes, Free Radicals, Face, Some Women, Child’s Play, Wood and Too Much Happiness) Length of one story is roughly thirty pages. They tell stories about ordinary men and women and some turning points in their lives, turning points which still have effect in their current life or somehow entrail in it. Stories are as short stories usually are: they tell you something but still leave you in wonder: what did that mean? Why did she say that? How can you move with your life after that? What did happen next? You crave for more.
In every short story there is a different main character, men and women, young and old. Unitive author is that they all seem ordinary people living their ordinary lives: families, friends and nice jobs.
Book’s characters have different kind of situations. Storie’s themes are heavy: murders, violence, dishonour, adultery and pure evilness. Even though the themes are harsh and it seems that incidents are so far away from your own life, author has made it sound like it could happen for all of us. Things are told so delicately but still straight. To counterbalance there are a little bit lighter themes also: hard relationships, normal circuit of life and misunderstandings. All these things mixed with love and continuation of life. My favorite short story was ”Free Radicals” which tells story about an old woman who has just lost her husband and man who comes to this woman’s house and tells that he has murdered his family, they have this strange ”kind-of-conversation” where turns out that this old lady isn’t so pure either.
Book’s narrator is an omniscient narrator in the most of the stories but some of the stories are told by characters. All the stories are told in the way you get to know the character as much as possible. Even though stories consentrate mainly on some incidents, there is happening so much more: sometimes the character looks back or time goes on and sometimes they just think their lives generally.
I kind of like the book. I usually read detective stories so this departed from them. It was refreshing to read in english, it brought challenge and it was nice to know that i was reading the book just like the author has wrote it.