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'The Love of a Good Woman: Stories'by Alice Munro (340 pages. Knopf. $24.00) Newsweek.com book review, March 15, 1999 The phrase "the love of a good woman" conjures up images of story-book wives and mothers. Alice Munro's latest book of fiction by that name, however, draws a more realistic picture of good women. In these eight long, carefully crafted stories, the love that any woman — girlfriend, wife, lover, or daughter — puts forth is not pure and untainted, but rather defined by difficult, painful choices. For instance, in "The Children Stay," Pauline leaves her husband for her lover, but hesitates: "Give in, give in, get back to [the children] any way at all." Then she realizes that, "a fluid choice, the choice of fantasy, is poured out on the ground and instantly hardens; it has taken its undeniable shape." She feels two conflicting loves; she chooses one, yet no one would contend that she doesn't want the other. In the exquisite last story, "My Mother's Dream," the choice isn't between two people, but between love and not love. The narrator says of her mother, "Sobered and grateful, not even able to risk thinking about what she'd just escaped, she took on loving me, because the alternative to loving was disaster." Munro is one of the few writers today who has made her name solely from her short fiction, and from this amazing collection of near-novellas, it's easy to see why. Her stories speak the truth. Munro's characters illustrate that behind the love of a good woman, there is pain as well as pleasure, but never perfection. |
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