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       #Post#: 229--------------------------------------------------
       DEAR LIFE: STORIES by Alice Munro (2012)
       By: agate Date: March 24, 2014, 8:20 pm
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       DEAR LIFE: STORIES by Alice Munro (2014)
       A fine collection of stories, including several largely
       autobiographical pieces at the end.
       Often the stories--all with a Canadian setting--are told by a
       woman in the first person, and many of them involve family
       problems arising from the Depression of the 1930s. Some of the
       characters have been maimed--one with a lame leg due to polio,
       for instance.  One takes place in a TB hospital.
       Munro's characters do not have happy lives, and at least one of
       them, Jackson in "Trained," seems inexplicably detached from
       people with whom he has had long associations.
       Munro seems to be presenting the world as she sees it: filled
       with people whose lives may make no sense, may have very little
       joy in them, but here they are. She bears witness to those who
       haven't been able to speak for themselves.
       In the final autobiographical piece, "Dear Life," we learn that
       as a child Alice Munro was often beaten by her father--and that
       the practice was "not uncommon" at the time (the 1930s). With
       these stories she has shown a few facets of this past time, with
       its own forms of cruelty and want.
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