Alice Munro

Runaway

In her writing, Alice Munro frequently returns to the rough landscape of her childhood in Wingham, Ontario. Of her mother, Munro has said, “My mother…is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl that I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.”

From Runaway:

“The problem was that she was a girl. If she got married—which might happen, as she was not bad-looking for a scholarship girl, she was not bad-looking at all—she would waste all her hard work and theirs, and if she did not get married she would probably become bleak and isolated, losing out on promotions to men (who needed them more, as they had to support families).”

Although she loved getting lost in novels, she was continually frustrated by her inability to complete one of her own. A short story she wrote based on the death of her mother in 1959, when Munro was twenty-eight, was the turning point. After that, she stopped wanting to write novels and embraced the short-story form.

For many years Munro worked in obscurity. When Munro finally published a collection of works, it comprised stories written over fifteen years, while performing household duties and raising three daughters. In 1972, Munro and her husband divorced, which spurred her to attain self-sufficiency through writing.

Munro married Gerald Fremlin in 1976. They lived together until his death in 2013. She has stated emphatically that Dear Life, her most recent collection of stories, will be her last. In 2013, Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

Dear Life. Through flawed and fully human characters, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate.

Juliet’s Tia Maria

In the short story, “Chance” (from the collection, Runaway), Juliet drinks Tia Maria in Eric’s bright kitchen, alone, on one of the longest days of the year.

1 cup water

3/4–1 cup brown sugar

4 tsp. powdered coffee

1 cup rum

4 tsp. vanilla extract

Caramel sauce

Whipped cream

Boil water, sugar, and coffee for ten minutes. Let cool. Add rum and vanilla. Pour into a bottle and refrigerate for one week before serving. To serve, pour into a martini glass and top with whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce. Serves 2–3.