Tag: short-stories
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Considering Alice Munro
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on a Munro chapter, in my Canadian women’s crime fiction book. The revisions since the spring have been rather more extensive than I’d anticipated. I thought I was writing about how Munro depicts violent crime, or suspicion that crimes have been committed, in a range of…
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“I’m no prude but . . .”: Alice Munro’s Women and the Problems of Sex and Love
In Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are? (I always feel like the question mark is wrong, as it’s an accusation and not a question), Rose recovers from the birth of her first child in a maternity ward, where one woman dominates the conversation about how her kitchen shelves are arranged. In a sea of…
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Library “Privileges” and Alice Munro
I awoke with a keen sense of excitement and anxiety this morning, the first day of the year. Per Louise Penny’s novels, I quickly murmured “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” before getting out of bed to feed our rabbit-like cat, who was already making soft cooing noises. She appreciates my early wake-ups. The question on my mind…
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Murder Ballads and Alice Munro’s “Open Secrets”
I’m initially veering a little off topic again, the topic being Canadian women’s crime fiction, to speculate about an intriguing musical genre that makes an odd appearance in Alice Munro’s story “Open Secrets.” A murder ballad is a sung story about violent death and its aftermath, including the execution of the murderer. Some of my…
The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction 