More Alice Munro...

That seems to be the only thing this blog is about these days, but that's because I've been reading a lot of her the past few months. Some great news about Munro: she just won the Booker International Prize (the international prize is for her body of work, whereas the regular Booker prize is for a particular book). Coincidentally, I was reading another piece about why she's not more famous this past weekend, and I wonder if this will do anything to boost her popularity.

Anyway, I just finished Carried Away this past weekend, in which I re-read "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" and "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." I know I've written before about how I would probably get more out of the reading if I slowed down; I think that having read them before and knowing what's coming allowed me to do that, and I really did enjoy and appreciate these two stories more. "Hateship," especially. I think my favorite story in the collection was "Carried Away," for the completeness of the story--characters, plot, insight, whatever it is that makes me love Munro's work so much. I'll probably try to get Open Secrets (from which "Carried Away" was taken) from the library before I leave and read the other stories in that book. It looks like four of them were compiled in Carried Away, so I might not have much more to read. I will definitely have to purchase Carried Away when I have the money.

Right now I'm reading Runaway, and this passage caught my attention:

"Soon"

When she read the letter, Juliet winced, as anybody does on discovering the preserved and disconcerting voice of some past fabricated self. She wondered at the sprightly cover-up, contrasting with the pain of her memories. Then she thought that some shift must have taken place, at that time, which she had not remembered. Some shift concerning where home was. [. . .]

Because it's what happens at home that you try to protect, as best as you can, for as long as you can.

I guess the past few years I've been thinking a lot about home; I know my brother has too, he asked this past year when people stopped considering their parents home as their own. Then this last year living with my parents--this passage makes me think back to the things I write about or tell my friends (I'm not always very forthcoming about my personal life; I never have been, really) about being at home, or even the decisions I've made or conclusion I've come to about who those friends are.