Elegant, graceful, and heart-warming stories

The book, "Family Furnishings", is the most recent collection of short stories written by Alice Munro and includes 24 stories written between 1995 and 2014. This book is a companion volume to her earlier Selected Stories (1968-1994). Alice Munro, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013 and has been called the Chekhov of our time, has written fourteen books of short stories.  Her stories are a testimony to her loving imagination, craftsmanship, and ability to touch the reader's heart.

Rather than offer a story-by-story commentary, I will highlight a few points from the most notable and crafty stories. The first one "Love of a Great Woman" is the lengthiest and has an interesting structure. Enid is a practical nurse who works at the home of Rupert Quinn, a trader taking care of his sick and dying wife. Enid and Rupert went to the same high school but their lives then took different paths. The story takes a sudden twist when the body of an optometrist, Mr. Willens,goes missing and was soon found in the lake along with his car. Everyone assumes that the optometrist took the wrong turn on the road while driving his car and drowned in the lake. However, Mrs. Quinn, before she dies confides in Enid that the optometrist was actually killed by her husband ina fit of rage when one day he comes back from work and finds him with his wife, apparently visiting her ona house call. Finally, Eniddecides to take her chance to see how far he will go with her and tell him that she knows about the incident.  She invites him to take her out on a boat ride, and tells him also that she does not swim. Will he killher; will they end up romantically tied? The story leaves many of these possibilities open, and ends in a mystery.

In "Working for a Living", Munro provides a brief history of her family. The story is also her tribute to her father who at many stages of his life was a farmer, a furrier, and then a factory worker. Her admiration for her mother, who was sick towards the final years of her life, was equally glowing. For a year, her mother worked towards selling the furs that her father produced, and was successful. Munro writes, "... she had known the right way to go about it, never pushing too hard, She had the true instinct for mixing friendship and business considerations, the instinct that all salespersons have."

"Wood" is the story of a craftsman and his wife, who is bed-ridden afflicted with unknown diseases. At the beginning of the short story the reader learns that Roy, a hardworking upholsterer and refinisher of furniture, is taking care of his wife and working hard to make ends meet. He decides to branch out into wood-cutting to make some extra money. Munro in her inimitable way interjects some comments the sick wife makes which might make the reader deduce as Munro's lack of sympathy for her. "She no longer drives her car. The warmth and glow were drained out of her face and brown eyes. ... she lost most of her interest in television."Then, one day the tide turns. Roy goes to the forest to chop trees, but is injured and helpless. The wife appears from nowhere (almost out of heaven) to the area of the forest where he was struggling to get back to seek care.

In "The Bear Came Over the Mountain", she paints the moving story of a man who, in spite of his wayward ways, goes to extraordinary lengths to please his wife, who is losing all her memories as she is ravaged by fast-onset dementia. Grant is a professor of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic literature, and someone who gets his way with young women, particularly his students.However, when he realizes that he is losing his wife, his first love, he undertakes some heroic efforts to comfort her. It is one of Munro's most acclaimed short stories and touches on the "progress of love"; the story was made into a movie under the title "Away From Her".

"Dimensions" is one the saddest but Munro ends it in a positive note with a "deux ex machina" maneuver.  A young woman goes to visit her husband, the father of her three dead children in jail. It's a long bus ride and she reflects on how she found herself in the current situation. Her husband, in a fit of rage, and to punish her, kills the children while she was out visiting a friend after a minor quarrel with him. He tries, in many ways, to put the guilt on her for storming out of the house in the midst of his verbal abuse, with utterances like "you brought it all on yourself", and "I did it to save them the misery. The misery of knowing that their mother had walked out on them".  Suddenly the bus stops, the passengers get down, and find a young man lifeless on the ground, seriously wounded due to an accident. The woman nurses the victim and he starts to breathe again.

"Hired Girl" is the experience of a young woman Elsa of limited means who works as a live-in maid. The story describes the slights and lack of empathy that she sees in Mrs. Montjoy's family. It is known that this story mirrors Munro's own life. According to a memoir written by her eldest daughter, Alice Laidlaw,Munro had worked as a maid for an affluent family in Toronto. The story also reveals her social consciousness and her keen awareness of inequities in modern society.

"Passion" is about the importance of passion in life and love.  Alice Munro's style is in full display in this story in all its regalia. The story starts with Grace, now a middle-aged woman, who came to visit a town where she spent her youth many years ago. Munro does not reveal at the beginning the reason for Grace's visit, but takes us back in little steps. Grace came from a humble family and gave up the prospect of marriage to Maury who comes from a well-to-do family. Munro recounts an episode which highlights the lack of physical passion in the relationship between Grace and Maury. They never kissed each other or displayed any other emotional intimacy. Then one day, Neil, his elder brother, takes her out as they gathered for Thanksgiving. He is a doctor and touches her in the process of giving her first aid for an injury, and she sees the power of passion. The writer hints that Neil also probably missed it in his relationship with his wife.

And even at the end, it is not clear what brought Grace back; to see Mrs. Travers who gave her a check for a thousand dollar with which she used to start a new life? Or to visit the place where she took a bold step in her youth that changed the course of her life, or to remember the man Neil, a married doctor and Mrs. Travers's son, who was part of her life changing decision, but died the very night their lives got intertwined?

Alice Munro and her short stories are magical and touch many aspects of societal values and display her take on love, parenthood, and womanhood. It is always an amazing experience reading one of her short stories which I have been doing for more than ten years. After her Nobel, I wanted to go back to many of her iconic stories. As I turn the pages of this new collection, my expectations were more than met and I rejoiced in Alice Munro's elegant, graceful, and heart-warming stories.

The reviewer lives and works in Boston, USA.