Runaway

The subtle and exquisitely polished stories of Alice Munro are among the literary marvels of our time, and Kymberly Dakin conveys effectively the peculiar blend of Canadian "haut provincialism" that provides the tone, context, and so much of the humor of Munro's finest stories. Each of these eight stories features a runaway of some kind; dramatic events are most often filtered through the consciousness and recollection of the female protagonist. Dakin, who also narrated Munro's last story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, works successfully in a narrow band of vocals and tones, grasping that these are stories of voice and of distance, in which motive and outcome often remain mysterious, and in which evenness of delivery is part of the drama of the telling. D.A.W. 2006 Audie Award Winner (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 11, 2004
Nothing is new in Munro's latest collection, which is to say that the author continues to perfect her virtuosic formula in these eight short stories, several of which previously appeared in the New Yorker
. While her style typifies the traditionally realistic, often domestic genre of that magazine, Munro's stories are also global, bighearted and warm. In the title story, a housekeeper tries to leave her emotionally abusive husband, entangling her employer in the process. Three interconnected stories—"Chance," "Soon" and "Silence"—follow a schoolteacher as she falls for an older man, returns as a young mother to visit her ailing parents on their farm and much later tries to "rescue" her daughter from a religious cult. In "Tricks," a lonely nurse on a day trip encounters a man from Montenegro and vows to return to his clock shop one year later to resume their affair. In deliberate prose, Munro captures their fleeting moment of passion on a train platform: "This talk felt more and more like an agreed-upon subterfuge, like a conventional screen for what was becoming more inevitable all the time, more necessary, between them." Munro's characters are hopeful and proud as they face both the betrayals and gestures of kindness that animate their relationships. One never knows quite where a Munro story will end, only that it will leave an incandescent trail of psychological insight. Agent, William Morris. 100,000 first printing.

The subtle and exquisitely polished stories of Alice Munro are among the literary marvels of our time, and Kymberly Dakin conveys effectively the peculiar blend of Canadian "haut provincialism" that provides the tone, context, and so much of the humor of Munro's finest stories. Each of these eight stories features a runaway of some kind; dramatic events are most often filtered through the consciousness and recollection of the female protagonist. Dakin, who also narrated Munro's last story collection, HATESHIP, FRIENDSHIP, COURTSHIP, LOVESHIP, MARRIAGE, works successfully in a narrow band of vocals and tones, grasping that these are stories of voice and of distance, in which motive and outcome often remain mysterious, and in which evenness of delivery is part of the drama of the telling. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine