Review: Dear Life by Alice Munro

I didn't expect to find Alice Munro in my local imported bookshop. It's a small shop and the fiction shelves are mostly stocked with the latest bestsellers and YA novels (on my last trip there there was a copy of the novelization of After, that horrid One Direction fanfiction). However good Mrs. Munro is, she isn't a best-selling author, per se. So I was a bit surprised to find a book of hers, her latest, in one of the shelf in mass market paperback format. I've always wanted to read Mrs. Munro after her Nobel Prize announcement but really hadn't had the chance, so I took it as a sign and bought it.

It turns out to be a good investment, indeed. There's a reason Mrs. Munro has a Nobel Prize now. Her stories are captivating, in a quiet, unassuming way. They don't dazzle or shock; the twists and turns are revealed slowly like a blooming flower. You are left questioning the characters' motives, the story keeps us in the dark of them, yet you don't finish the story unsatisfied. The stories are realistic, in a way that it mimics real life and its quiet absurdity. You don't know the characters' motives and reasons, because there's no need. Sometimes, life has no need for reason or motive. Sometimes, you do things just because you can.

Mrs. Munro is also a shining example of how you don't need purple prose and long run-on sentences to make good literature. Her sentences are short, cut marvelously and to great effect. Her words are simple and staid and elegant and flowed so beautifully. Her characters might seem passionless, but also not. There's passion and vivacity in them, clearly, but muted, not at all noticeable.

I wish I can write a longer review, but it's nearing 12 a.m. and I'm going to New York City for the first time in four days. My mind can't think of anything except my laundry, what to buy, oh my god is there going to be a blizzard when I'm there, how do you wade through 3 feet of snow, etc. So my apologies, this is all I can do for now.

Until next time.

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Book information:
Title: Dear Life
Author: Munro, Alice.
Edition: New York: Vintage Books. First Vintage International Open-Market Edition. 2013. (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-8041-6891-5