Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Critics, writing about Alice Munro, tend towards the poetic. This article from the Toronto Star is a good example. Really, Munro’s stories are just terrific reads.

Her latest, Too Much Happiness, is a little darker than usual. The ten stories deal with infanticide, forgiveness, adultery, a home invasion, murder, secrets and jealousy. The final story “Too Much Happiness” takes us out of Canada to Russia and Sweden. She tells the story of real-life mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky, whose ironic final words give the story and the book its title.

Of course, there is only one Alice Munro. I won’t use the word readalike, but a couple of authors do come to mind when I think about some of Munro’s more typical themes. Anne Tyler and Carol Shields often (though not exclusively, of course) write about women and their relationships with spouses, children, friends and work. Unless by Carol Shields is about a woman who normally considers herself to be happy and successful. She is distressed to find her eldest daughter homeless on the streets of Toronto.

Alice Munro is sometimes compared to Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor would have been about ten years older than Munro and died quite young. She grew up in Georgia and her writing style has been called Southern Gothic with strong regional settings. Her characters, like Munro’s, find themselves challenging deeply held community beliefs.