Dear Life

With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

Praise for Dear Life

“These stories are perfect…. A collection as rich and surprising as any in Alice Munro’s deep career…” – National Post

“She is, and has been for decades, one of our most important writers, one whose work represents all the most essential and pleasurable aspects of literature, and which reminds us of what great literature is.” – Globe and Mail

“Like an alchemist, she transforms the ordinary into gold. In her stories, ordinary life, despite its hurts, indignities and losses, becomes dear…. Deceptively simple, peopled by seemingly ordinary men and women - mostly women - Alice Munro's short stories are textured and deep.” – Ottawa Citizen

“As always, Munro writes with piercing insight about childhood, relationships, and Canadian small-town life.” – The New Yorker