Am I missing something? Alice Munro is so well respected as a writer of short stories (and I mean SHORT) that I'm not sure how I didn't enjoy this collection. Dear Life is the latest from the Nobel Prize winning author. Perhaps it would have been better if I had read one at a time, say between reading other books. Otherwise you might, like me, get bogged down in one ordinary life after another. However, the ordinariness is broken by the occasional devastating life changing moment. But mostly the stories are just OK rather than exceptional. I did find some of her prose somewhat obtuse: "Jails were opened up to shelter the men who followed the railway tracks, but even some of them, you can be sure, were nursing a notion bound to make them a million dollars". There were too many times I found the writing incoherent. But that may have just been me. I have to say that these stories are not in the same league as Kate Atkinson's "Not The End Of The World", Kazuo Ishiguro's "Nocturnes" or anything by Ali Smith. Give me wit and subtlety any day of the week.
The Ice Palace by the Scandinavian writer Tarjei Vesaas is a unusual book. It was either the translation or the mystical original writing that meant it read like no other book I have ever come across. The language is so strange, not all the time but enough to get in the way of what is a good story. I guess it is meant to be poetic, and certainly there are times when the prose helps to make the writing very atmospheric and tense. But poetic to me is not just about a tricky way with words. In the hands of a less literal translator, this could have been so much better. The ingredients are all there. A missing girl and her friend who cannot let her memory go. There are a number of highly sensory experiences that are completely memorable. This is a hauntingly original piece of work, and I cannot wait to hear what the other members of our book club have to say.
P.S. They all liked it.
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