Carried Away A Personal Selection of Stories; Introduction by Margaret Atwood

by Munro, Alice; Atwood, Margaret

• ISBN13: 9780307264862
• ISBN10: 0307264866
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-26
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

Carried Awayis a dazzling selection of storiesseventeen favorites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. Alice Munro has been repeatedly hailed as one of our greatest living writers, a reputation that has been growing for years. The stories brought together here span a quarter century, drawn from some of her earliest books,The Beggar MaidandThe Moons of Jupiter,through her recent best-selling collection,Runaway. Here are such favorites as "Royal Beatings" in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; "Friend of My Youth" in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and "The Love of a Good Woman," in which, when an old crime resurfaces, a woman has to choose whether to believe in the man she intends to marry. Munro's incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn't know change her life forever, Munro's unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold.

Author Biography

Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published thirteen collections of stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women, and two volumes of Selected Stories. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two of its Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England’s W. H. Smith Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Man Booker International Prize. In 2013 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Select Bibliography	xxi
Chronology	xxii
Royal Beatings	1	(26)
The Beggar Maid	27	(38)
The Turkey Season	65	(18)
The Moons of Jupiter	83	(18)
The Progress of Love	101	(30)
Miles City, Montana	131	(24)
Friend of My Youth	155	(24)
Meneseteung	179	(24)
Differently	203	(28)
Carried Away	231	(46)
The Albanian Virgin	277	(46)
A Wilderness Station	323	(34)
Vandals	357	(32)
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage	389	(50)
Save the Reaper	439	(32)
Runaway	471	(42)
The Bear Came Over the Mountain	513