I found out Munro died from your instagram and I immediately burst into tears, which was unexpected! But her work meant so much to me. Taught me that the little things in my life mattered, too. I think all the time about the line from Lives of Girls and Women, "People's lives in Jubilee, as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable--deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum."
And, if I may with a little romantic TMI--when my husband and I started dating in college, I told him about Alice Munro (shout out to my weekly 3 hr Canadian Lit class!) and he told me that one of his favorite movies at the time was based on one of her stories--Sarah Polley's Away From Her, about a woman with Alzheimer's. It was one of the clues I first had that I would love this man, probably forever (that was in 2008 and we're still here!)
AHP: feel free to share the contents of the kit I give therapy clients who are entering menopause, along with the assurance that life after menopause is pretty reliably an upgrade.
Chapter on midlife, in The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine
Various, depending on the woman: Margaret Manganroth Gullette’s Safe at Last in The Middle Years: The Invention of the Midlife Progress Novel helped me get my bearings, for instance. (I didn’t know I expected my life to be a progress narrative until it stopped being one.)
What wonderful resources, Nan, thank you. I write about being a woman in midlife with a late-in-life divorce on my Substack and I am intrigued by what you share here. Appreciate you sharing this kit.
Margaret Atwood wrote about her friendship with Alice Munro in her sub stack newsletter including how they would get mistaken for each other and play along. Am a big fan of both authors. Vale Ms Munro.
Alice Munro was my favorite writer. Until the last few years, she lived not far from me, in Southern Ontario. I was excited that the same soil and lakes and rivers were home to someone who wrote so beautifully. Alice was not a fancy writer. She was like Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese film director. She observed and let the reader observe or relate, if they had a similar experience.
I discovered Alice Munro in my senior seminar class about Canadian Fiction. (I went to Whitman too!) I really loved her writing. It's been a long time since I've read any of her books, I think I should revisit them ☺️.
Thanks for reminding me of that short story. It’s haunting. I read this from Sheila Heti in her NYTimes piece on AM but your photo for this story suggests she’s wrong! “Ms. Munro only ever wrote short stories — not novels, though she must have been pressured to.”
Margaret Atwood has a reminiscence in her substack today. She notes that AM described Lives of Girls and Women as a novel, but virtually no one else did. The non-alanis morrissette irony of it all.
I can’t wait for Friday’s discussion. The first few months of menopause were, with a few exceptions, not great for me and I am looking forward to learning about new ways of framing my thinking.
I loved Alice Munro also. I live in Huron County, close to where she was born and lived. Reading her work made me feel so seen as a young woman living in rural Southwestern Ontario. When I bought her last book of short stories I delayed in reading them, as I was fairly certain it would be her last book. I wanted to still have new stories to read. It has been beautiful watching the tributes to Alice’s brilliance this week. I have also been so sad - and I am glad that I am not alone.
I live just “up the road” from you in Bruce County. I was late to the game discovering Alice. I read Runaway during the pandemic as part of a book club with a couple women from around this area. On our honeymoon I picked up “Lives of Women & Girls” from our Costa Rica AirBnB’s shelf. I’d never seen our “home” depicted in popular fiction. I can appreciate how Alice’s work was so important for so many rural women. Growing up rural in this part of Ontario, I feel like, for a time, you can’t wait to leave. And then you get to the city and it’s like no one gets where you’re from and discounts this place, which makes you all the more proud of it & determined. I love that Alice set her stories here and didn’t paint life as this idyllic, romanticized thing. Your words echo what I am seeing from many women in my feed.
I think about that story a lot too. Just pulled it off the shelf to revisit those amazing last few lines which are burned in my brain, “For where, on the list of things she planned to achieve in her life, was there any mention of…" (leaving it there so as not to spoil anything…)
This is going to seem off-topic, but can you explain what it means for something to be your "Roman Empire"? I've been seeing this expression thrown out a ton lately and I don't get it.
But even six tiktoks deep I was a little confused because I, too think about the Roman Empire (and other things I learned from the Hardcore History podcast and other history podcasts) on a regular basis. Truly most days! And I am uber feminine! But it is perspective that helps me emotionally detach from the dumpster fire that is American politics. It is easy to become very distressed about how far we've fallen since 2016. But then I think about the Assyrians forcing their conquered political rivals to literally eat their own children (per Dan Carlin). The work of humanism and feminism is so much bigger than our own time, and progress is unbearably slow. Expecting delays and major setbacks helps to keep me from giving up.
But I think maybe I'm thinking about the roman empire in a different way than these tiktok men are thinking about it.
I love Alice Munro's writing so much. Been thinking about her (even more) about this week. "Dear Life" was my first collection of hers and I've never looked back. Always here to talk about Alice Munro.
I found out Munro died from your instagram and I immediately burst into tears, which was unexpected! But her work meant so much to me. Taught me that the little things in my life mattered, too. I think all the time about the line from Lives of Girls and Women, "People's lives in Jubilee, as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable--deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum."
And, if I may with a little romantic TMI--when my husband and I started dating in college, I told him about Alice Munro (shout out to my weekly 3 hr Canadian Lit class!) and he told me that one of his favorite movies at the time was based on one of her stories--Sarah Polley's Away From Her, about a woman with Alzheimer's. It was one of the clues I first had that I would love this man, probably forever (that was in 2008 and we're still here!)
I LOVED "Away From Her" -- I think it was criminal that Gordon Pinsent wasn't at least nominated for an Oscar for that!
AHP: feel free to share the contents of the kit I give therapy clients who are entering menopause, along with the assurance that life after menopause is pretty reliably an upgrade.
Chapter on midlife, in The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine
Sandra Loh, The bitch is back: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-bitch-is-back/308642/
Mary Reufle, Pause: https://granta.com/pause/ (reprinted in my book, Aging: An Apprenticeship)
Various, depending on the woman: Margaret Manganroth Gullette’s Safe at Last in The Middle Years: The Invention of the Midlife Progress Novel helped me get my bearings, for instance. (I didn’t know I expected my life to be a progress narrative until it stopped being one.)
What wonderful resources, Nan, thank you. I write about being a woman in midlife with a late-in-life divorce on my Substack and I am intrigued by what you share here. Appreciate you sharing this kit.
Ah, Alice Munro.....These lines, this story, one of so many indelible tellings:
"They were all in their early thirties. An age when it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life." The Moons of Jupiter.
Margaret Atwood wrote about her friendship with Alice Munro in her sub stack newsletter including how they would get mistaken for each other and play along. Am a big fan of both authors. Vale Ms Munro.
Alice Munro was my favorite writer. Until the last few years, she lived not far from me, in Southern Ontario. I was excited that the same soil and lakes and rivers were home to someone who wrote so beautifully. Alice was not a fancy writer. She was like Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese film director. She observed and let the reader observe or relate, if they had a similar experience.
I discovered Alice Munro in my senior seminar class about Canadian Fiction. (I went to Whitman too!) I really loved her writing. It's been a long time since I've read any of her books, I think I should revisit them ☺️.
Thanks for reminding me of that short story. It’s haunting. I read this from Sheila Heti in her NYTimes piece on AM but your photo for this story suggests she’s wrong! “Ms. Munro only ever wrote short stories — not novels, though she must have been pressured to.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/opinion/what-alice-munro-would-never-do.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU0.Uziv.rddNLPTHr_kP&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Margaret Atwood has a reminiscence in her substack today. She notes that AM described Lives of Girls and Women as a novel, but virtually no one else did. The non-alanis morrissette irony of it all.
I can’t wait for Friday’s discussion. The first few months of menopause were, with a few exceptions, not great for me and I am looking forward to learning about new ways of framing my thinking.
I loved Alice Munro also. I live in Huron County, close to where she was born and lived. Reading her work made me feel so seen as a young woman living in rural Southwestern Ontario. When I bought her last book of short stories I delayed in reading them, as I was fairly certain it would be her last book. I wanted to still have new stories to read. It has been beautiful watching the tributes to Alice’s brilliance this week. I have also been so sad - and I am glad that I am not alone.
I live just “up the road” from you in Bruce County. I was late to the game discovering Alice. I read Runaway during the pandemic as part of a book club with a couple women from around this area. On our honeymoon I picked up “Lives of Women & Girls” from our Costa Rica AirBnB’s shelf. I’d never seen our “home” depicted in popular fiction. I can appreciate how Alice’s work was so important for so many rural women. Growing up rural in this part of Ontario, I feel like, for a time, you can’t wait to leave. And then you get to the city and it’s like no one gets where you’re from and discounts this place, which makes you all the more proud of it & determined. I love that Alice set her stories here and didn’t paint life as this idyllic, romanticized thing. Your words echo what I am seeing from many women in my feed.
I think about that story a lot too. Just pulled it off the shelf to revisit those amazing last few lines which are burned in my brain, “For where, on the list of things she planned to achieve in her life, was there any mention of…" (leaving it there so as not to spoil anything…)
This is going to seem off-topic, but can you explain what it means for something to be your "Roman Empire"? I've been seeing this expression thrown out a ton lately and I don't get it.
Lucky for you I have a whole pinned Instagram story about it! https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18008290936799307/
Ahhh I get it. Thank you.
But even six tiktoks deep I was a little confused because I, too think about the Roman Empire (and other things I learned from the Hardcore History podcast and other history podcasts) on a regular basis. Truly most days! And I am uber feminine! But it is perspective that helps me emotionally detach from the dumpster fire that is American politics. It is easy to become very distressed about how far we've fallen since 2016. But then I think about the Assyrians forcing their conquered political rivals to literally eat their own children (per Dan Carlin). The work of humanism and feminism is so much bigger than our own time, and progress is unbearably slow. Expecting delays and major setbacks helps to keep me from giving up.
But I think maybe I'm thinking about the roman empire in a different way than these tiktok men are thinking about it.
Your post reminded me of the Munro story you mentioned, and how much I liked it. Thank you.
Thank you for reminding me to go out and read more of Alice Munro especially the stories you mention here.
Thank you, thank you, for encouragement to live our "one wild and precious life (lives.")
I love Alice Munro's writing so much. Been thinking about her (even more) about this week. "Dear Life" was my first collection of hers and I've never looked back. Always here to talk about Alice Munro.