Dear Life

Alice Munro was born in 1931 and was the author of thirteen collections of stories and the novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Who Do You Think You Are? (previously published as The Beggar Maid), and was awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Alice Munro died in 2024.

"What unifies the 14 stories in Dear Life is a quietness of tone and the unliterary language. Munro writes as an exceptionally ordinary person might do in a letter to a close friend, never using words you need to look up in a dictionary and never introducing flashy metaphors and similes, and never misplacing a comma. The style is in keeping with the settings, where a doctor's bill can be the undoing of a family, religion weighs heavily on the soul and everyone knows everyone else's business" -- Alan Taylor Herald "A slight sense of withholding gives Munro's prose its gracefulness, and allows intimacy without danger. After many years, many collections and many wonderful stories, readers may feel they know everything about Alice Munro, especially as so many of her characters lead lives similar to her own. In fact, we know very little about her. This is one of the reasons readers become dizzy with love for Munro. This other reason is that she is so damn good" -- Anne Enright Guardian "A collection of stories unravelling the mystery in the domestic...candid" -- Catherine Taylor Sunday Telegraph "Deceptively artless...Munro has no need for tricks; there is nothing strange. Just everyday life, in all its plain, abundant richness and sorrow" -- Claire Allfree Metro "[A] striking collection" -- Emma Herdman Psychologies

Deep and surprising and unsparing Helen Simpson Guardian