Chekhov... Colette... Munro..., 17 Apr 2003
I discovered Alice Munro`s expansive, long-breathed, feisty stories late in the day. It was her collection `The Progress of Love` a few years ago, and I was heartstopped, exultant to have found such generous beauty, such honest and freely passionate writing. I am reading the `Selected` - taking my time with them, for each story is a world, a journey, though it only be from the house to the lake, which her readers know can be the most fascinating odyssey in itself - and marvelling anew at such gemlike works of art as `Material` and `Mobile, Montana`. Ms Munro is a great artist (in a way that, say, Doris Lessing, for all her brilliance, is not) and a very fine writer. She is by no means a `feminist writer`! Not only does such an appellation diminish and limit her achievement, it is plainly inaccurate. She writes with blazing clearness and wry compassion about women and men - as does, say, Doris Lessing...
To give this great writer less than a full 5 stars seems to me impertinent, to say the least. Read her.

it was great., 12 Dec 2000
the way alice munro writes is extremely good. i liked many of the stories, especiallly the progress of love. i like the way the child is descrbing her mothers life..

A great book to dip into., 27 Nov 2000
A great book to dip into and a wonderful introduction to Alice Munro. Many of the stories explore relationships and look at the responsibility the characters take on board for mothers, fathers, children and step-mothers at different points their lives.

Munro uses straight forward language in her stories and everyday situations, bringing the characters to life by their reaction to these everyday occurances.

Some of the stories are romantic, like" There's Something I've been meaning to tell you", where we get an insight into the existance of two woman Et and Char, toward the end of their lives. The woman have both loved and lost and accepted "their lot" but the return of a child hood sweetheart to the village stirs up feelings.

Munro has many strong women in these stories, and manages to give them a real degree of sensitivity and softness along side the forcefulness that enables the characters to be opened up so that we can see how they got to be the way they are.

A great book to keep on the bedside table and read every now and again or indeed share.

The award-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro's collection Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage is about the lives, hopes, dreams and ends of women: their marriages, their relationships with those who touch their lives in some momentous way--however brief or long-standing--and the extraordinary effects wrought by the hand of fate. She is not only a genius storyteller, she has a cunning ability to make you believe the short story you've just read was actually a full-length novel. So if you've ever thought twice about buying a book of short stories, then the marvellous Alice Munro will make you think again..

Munro's world is one of post-war Canada, when women are beginning to experience a constrained kind of freedom. In "What is Remembered", a chance meeting at a funeral has a profound, yet stabilising effect on Meriel, a young wife and mother. "Young husbands", writes Munro, "were stern in those days". Between learning how to kowtow to bosses and manage wives, there was so much else to learn: mortgages, lawns and politics for a start. The wives, meantime, were afforded the opportunity of "a second kind of adolescence"--but only in the confines of the family home, while the men were absent, and only after wifely jobs were accounted for. In the book's title story, a capable, spinsterly housekeeper finds love in the most unexpected place, in the most unexpected way. However the opportunity presents itself, it is what you choose to make of it that really matters, the author seems to be saying. Johanna could be deeply disappointed with her "opportunity" but, in her straightforward way, amends a few details and makes the most of it.

Alice Munro's stories are retrospective; tales of lives lived, for better or worse. If you want something, take it, quickly. You only get one life, and this is it. --Carey Green

Chekhov... Colette... Munro..., 17 Apr 2003
I discovered Alice Munro`s expansive, long-breathed, feisty stories late in the day. It was her collection `The Progress of Love` a few years ago, and I was heartstopped, exultant to have found such generous beauty, such honest and freely passionate writing. I am reading the `Selected` - taking my time with them, for each story is a world, a journey, though it only be from the house to the lake, which her readers know can be the most fascinating odyssey in itself - and marvelling anew at such gemlike works of art as `Material` and `Mobile, Montana`. Ms Munro is a great artist (in a way that, say, Doris Lessing, for all her brilliance, is not) and a very fine writer. She is by no means a `feminist writer`! Not only does such an appellation diminish and limit her achievement, it is plainly inaccurate. She writes with blazing clearness and wry compassion about women and men - as does, say, Doris Lessing...
To give this great writer less than a full 5 stars seems to me impertinent, to say the least. Read her.

it was great., 12 Dec 2000
the way alice munro writes is extremely good. i liked many of the stories, especiallly the progress of love. i like the way the child is descrbing her mothers life..

A great book to dip into., 27 Nov 2000
A great book to dip into and a wonderful introduction to Alice Munro. Many of the stories explore relationships and look at the responsibility the characters take on board for mothers, fathers, children and step-mothers at different points their lives.

Munro uses straight forward language in her stories and everyday situations, bringing the characters to life by their reaction to these everyday occurances.

Some of the stories are romantic, like" There's Something I've been meaning to tell you", where we get an insight into the existance of two woman Et and Char, toward the end of their lives. The woman have both loved and lost and accepted "their lot" but the return of a child hood sweetheart to the village stirs up feelings.

Munro has many strong women in these stories, and manages to give them a real degree of sensitivity and softness along side the forcefulness that enables the characters to be opened up so that we can see how they got to be the way they are.

A great book to keep on the bedside table and read every now and again or indeed share.

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating, 12 Jul 2005
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.

Chekhov... Colette... Munro..., 17 Apr 2003
I discovered Alice Munro`s expansive, long-breathed, feisty stories late in the day. It was her collection `The Progress of Love` a few years ago, and I was heartstopped, exultant to have found such generous beauty, such honest and freely passionate writing. I am reading the `Selected` - taking my time with them, for each story is a world, a journey, though it only be from the house to the lake, which her readers know can be the most fascinating odyssey in itself - and marvelling anew at such gemlike works of art as `Material` and `Mobile, Montana`. Ms Munro is a great artist (in a way that, say, Doris Lessing, for all her brilliance, is not) and a very fine writer. She is by no means a `feminist writer`! Not only does such an appellation diminish and limit her achievement, it is plainly inaccurate. She writes with blazing clearness and wry compassion about women and men - as does, say, Doris Lessing...
To give this great writer less than a full 5 stars seems to me impertinent, to say the least. Read her.

it was great., 12 Dec 2000
the way alice munro writes is extremely good. i liked many of the stories, especiallly the progress of love. i like the way the child is descrbing her mothers life..

A great book to dip into., 27 Nov 2000
A great book to dip into and a wonderful introduction to Alice Munro. Many of the stories explore relationships and look at the responsibility the characters take on board for mothers, fathers, children and step-mothers at different points their lives.

Munro uses straight forward language in her stories and everyday situations, bringing the characters to life by their reaction to these everyday occurances.

Some of the stories are romantic, like" There's Something I've been meaning to tell you", where we get an insight into the existance of two woman Et and Char, toward the end of their lives. The woman have both loved and lost and accepted "their lot" but the return of a child hood sweetheart to the village stirs up feelings.

Munro has many strong women in these stories, and manages to give them a real degree of sensitivity and softness along side the forcefulness that enables the characters to be opened up so that we can see how they got to be the way they are.

A great book to keep on the bedside table and read every now and again or indeed share.

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating, 12 Jul 2005
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.

Please Open Secrets, 04 Feb 2003
On the whole, I have to confess my annoyance at the short story; I find it amazingly difficult to immerse myself in the plot, where you know 20 pages later, you'll be met with a happily rounded- off story and little to mull over. So thank God for Open Secrets! In this, Alice Munro twists and pulls the short story genre until it is as unrecognisable as it is unpredictable- so very rereshing!
In Open Secrets the stories do not revolve around plot, allowing the reader to become connected through location, character relations and intrigue rather than linear events. For example, the title story centres on the small- town gossip of a local girl's murder, and while we don't ever find out the truth of events, a woman's intuition and the insight we get into small community life tells us more than we can articulate. For it is this that makes Munro's collection so marvellous- the fact that we can read a story and arrive at a feeling, rather than a conclusion, articulating not the truth, but feminine ideology and selfhood.

Chekhov... Colette... Munro..., 17 Apr 2003
I discovered Alice Munro`s expansive, long-breathed, feisty stories late in the day. It was her collection `The Progress of Love` a few years ago, and I was heartstopped, exultant to have found such generous beauty, such honest and freely passionate writing. I am reading the `Selected` - taking my time with them, for each story is a world, a journey, though it only be from the house to the lake, which her readers know can be the most fascinating odyssey in itself - and marvelling anew at such gemlike works of art as `Material` and `Mobile, Montana`. Ms Munro is a great artist (in a way that, say, Doris Lessing, for all her brilliance, is not) and a very fine writer. She is by no means a `feminist writer`! Not only does such an appellation diminish and limit her achievement, it is plainly inaccurate. She writes with blazing clearness and wry compassion about women and men - as does, say, Doris Lessing...
To give this great writer less than a full 5 stars seems to me impertinent, to say the least. Read her.

it was great., 12 Dec 2000
the way alice munro writes is extremely good. i liked many of the stories, especiallly the progress of love. i like the way the child is descrbing her mothers life..

A great book to dip into., 27 Nov 2000
A great book to dip into and a wonderful introduction to Alice Munro. Many of the stories explore relationships and look at the responsibility the characters take on board for mothers, fathers, children and step-mothers at different points their lives.

Munro uses straight forward language in her stories and everyday situations, bringing the characters to life by their reaction to these everyday occurances.

Some of the stories are romantic, like" There's Something I've been meaning to tell you", where we get an insight into the existance of two woman Et and Char, toward the end of their lives. The woman have both loved and lost and accepted "their lot" but the return of a child hood sweetheart to the village stirs up feelings.

Munro has many strong women in these stories, and manages to give them a real degree of sensitivity and softness along side the forcefulness that enables the characters to be opened up so that we can see how they got to be the way they are.

A great book to keep on the bedside table and read every now and again or indeed share.

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating, 12 Jul 2005
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.

Please Open Secrets, 04 Feb 2003
On the whole, I have to confess my annoyance at the short story; I find it amazingly difficult to immerse myself in the plot, where you know 20 pages later, you'll be met with a happily rounded- off story and little to mull over. So thank God for Open Secrets! In this, Alice Munro twists and pulls the short story genre until it is as unrecognisable as it is unpredictable- so very rereshing!
In Open Secrets the stories do not revolve around plot, allowing the reader to become connected through location, character relations and intrigue rather than linear events. For example, the title story centres on the small- town gossip of a local girl's murder, and while we don't ever find out the truth of events, a woman's intuition and the insight we get into small community life tells us more than we can articulate. For it is this that makes Munro's collection so marvellous- the fact that we can read a story and arrive at a feeling, rather than a conclusion, articulating not the truth, but feminine ideology and selfhood.

A beautifully written and wise book, 05 May 2001
Sorry, but I completely disagree with the previous reviewer. This was the best book I have read this year. If you like slice-of-life writing, if you are looking for a book that makes you think 'yes, I have felt exactly like that', if you are a fan of Raymond Carver, do read The Love of a Good Woman. It is wonderful.

A disappointing collection of short stories, 28 Feb 2001
I bought this because it was widely praised in the literary reviews. My memory is that one short review called it "one of the best collection of short stories in recent years". However, it passed me by. I found the stories dull and uninteresting. After each one I thought, "so what - is that it"? They were good at putting me to sleep though. Only the final one (about a crying baby, recalled from the baby's point of view) came anywhere close to holding my interest. I think part of the problem is that I like my short stories to have a good ending; to have a twist in the tale. These don't.

The award-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro's collection Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage is about the lives, hopes, dreams and ends of women: their marriages, their relationships with those who touch their lives in some momentous way--however brief or long-standing--and the extraordinary effects wrought by the hand of fate. She is not only a genius storyteller, she has a cunning ability to make you believe the short story you've just read was actually a full-length novel. So if you've ever thought twice about buying a book of short stories, then the marvellous Alice Munro will make you think again..

Munro's world is one of post-war Canada, when women are beginning to experience a constrained kind of freedom. In "What is Remembered", a chance meeting at a funeral has a profound, yet stabilising effect on Meriel, a young wife and mother. "Young husbands", writes Munro, "were stern in those days". Between learning how to kowtow to bosses and manage wives, there was so much else to learn: mortgages, lawns and politics for a start. The wives, meantime, were afforded the opportunity of "a second kind of adolescence"--but only in the confines of the family home, while the men were absent, and only after wifely jobs were accounted for. In the book's title story, a capable, spinsterly housekeeper finds love in the most unexpected place, in the most unexpected way. However the opportunity presents itself, it is what you choose to make of it that really matters, the author seems to be saying. Johanna could be deeply disappointed with her "opportunity" but, in her straightforward way, amends a few details and makes the most of it.

Alice Munro's stories are retrospective; tales of lives lived, for better or worse. If you want something, take it, quickly. You only get one life, and this is it. --Carey Green

Chekhov... Colette... Munro..., 17 Apr 2003
I discovered Alice Munro`s expansive, long-breathed, feisty stories late in the day. It was her collection `The Progress of Love` a few years ago, and I was heartstopped, exultant to have found such generous beauty, such honest and freely passionate writing. I am reading the `Selected` - taking my time with them, for each story is a world, a journey, though it only be from the house to the lake, which her readers know can be the most fascinating odyssey in itself - and marvelling anew at such gemlike works of art as `Material` and `Mobile, Montana`. Ms Munro is a great artist (in a way that, say, Doris Lessing, for all her brilliance, is not) and a very fine writer. She is by no means a `feminist writer`! Not only does such an appellation diminish and limit her achievement, it is plainly inaccurate. She writes with blazing clearness and wry compassion about women and men - as does, say, Doris Lessing...
To give this great writer less than a full 5 stars seems to me impertinent, to say the least. Read her.

it was great., 12 Dec 2000
the way alice munro writes is extremely good. i liked many of the stories, especiallly the progress of love. i like the way the child is descrbing her mothers life..

A great book to dip into., 27 Nov 2000
A great book to dip into and a wonderful introduction to Alice Munro. Many of the stories explore relationships and look at the responsibility the characters take on board for mothers, fathers, children and step-mothers at different points their lives.

Munro uses straight forward language in her stories and everyday situations, bringing the characters to life by their reaction to these everyday occurances.

Some of the stories are romantic, like" There's Something I've been meaning to tell you", where we get an insight into the existance of two woman Et and Char, toward the end of their lives. The woman have both loved and lost and accepted "their lot" but the return of a child hood sweetheart to the village stirs up feelings.

Munro has many strong women in these stories, and manages to give them a real degree of sensitivity and softness along side the forcefulness that enables the characters to be opened up so that we can see how they got to be the way they are.

A great book to keep on the bedside table and read every now and again or indeed share.

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating, 12 Jul 2005
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.

Please Open Secrets, 04 Feb 2003
On the whole, I have to confess my annoyance at the short story; I find it amazingly difficult to immerse myself in the plot, where you know 20 pages later, you'll be met with a happily rounded- off story and little to mull over. So thank God for Open Secrets! In this, Alice Munro twists and pulls the short story genre until it is as unrecognisable as it is unpredictable- so very rereshing!
In Open Secrets the stories do not revolve around plot, allowing the reader to become connected through location, character relations and intrigue rather than linear events. For example, the title story centres on the small- town gossip of a local girl's murder, and while we don't ever find out the truth of events, a woman's intuition and the insight we get into small community life tells us more than we can articulate. For it is this that makes Munro's collection so marvellous- the fact that we can read a story and arrive at a feeling, rather than a conclusion, articulating not the truth, but feminine ideology and selfhood.

A beautifully written and wise book, 05 May 2001
Sorry, but I completely disagree with the previous reviewer. This was the best book I have read this year. If you like slice-of-life writing, if you are looking for a book that makes you think 'yes, I have felt exactly like that', if you are a fan of Raymond Carver, do read The Love of a Good Woman. It is wonderful.

A disappointing collection of short stories, 28 Feb 2001
I bought this because it was widely praised in the literary reviews. My memory is that one short review called it "one of the best collection of short stories in recent years". However, it passed me by. I found the stories dull and uninteresting. After each one I thought, "so what - is that it"? They were good at putting me to sleep though. Only the final one (about a crying baby, recalled from the baby's point of view) came anywhere close to holding my interest. I think part of the problem is that I like my short stories to have a good ending; to have a twist in the tale. These don't.

beautiful writing, but oddly frustrating, 12 Jul 2005
The first story in the collection is beautifully constructed and the main character Johanna is sensitively and credibly drawn. The cruelty of the two teenage girls who fake a series of love letters lead the reader to await heartbreak and pain for Johanna, but the ending which turns tragedy to happiness and fulfilment for the heroine, written with such deftness by Alice Munro makes for joyful reading.

Some stories are more successful than others and contain excellent description, some very moving moments and a portrayal of some of the realities of life often painful, sometimes beautiful usually insightful.

Yet, for me I found the stories frustrating in their brevity (yes, I know they're short stories), too sudden in their endings and more like a snack that leaves you hungry, but doesn't make you want more of the same.