I did reviews for each of the stories in this book, because they were all amazing and beautiful and I need to spread the word about this amazing woman writer.

Dimensions

It is kind of ironic that a collection titled Too Much Happiness begins with the story of woman whose children were brutally murdered by her husband. It is a wonderful short story, mind you. I’ve never read such a portrayal of abusive relations and emotional abuse. It was almost painfully accurate. In the story a young woman, Doree, marries an older man (she’s about sixteen when they get married), and is constantly bullied and diminished by him.The husband, Lloyd is pretty much a jerk with everyone but she loves him and endures him anyway. I would have sent him to hell without much hesitation. After a fight, she seeks solace at a friend’s house for the night, but when she returns to her home, finds that her husband has killed their three kids.

The story is revealed little by little. We first learn than she goes to visit her husband who has some sort of mental illness, and that her psychologist doesn’t seem to approve it. At the end of the story, it is hard to understand why does she keep going back to him, but there’s a moment where the narrator mentions that it was because he was the only other person who remembers them. It keeps the idea of the emotional abuse that lingers around the whole story.

The story ends when she is witness of a traffic accident. A young man crashes his car and falls into the street. At first, she believes him to be dead, but realizes that he has pulse and begins resuscitating him. I really loved that part. I mean, she can’t get her family back, but she can help that boy to live. I don’t know, it was a nice scene and left me with the feeling that things will get better.

Fiction

This story is narrated in two separate parts, but both are focalized in the same character. In part I, it tells the story of Joyce and Jon’s marriage. Highschool sweethearts, they married young and lived a pretty good life together. That is, until he fell for another woman and forced Joyce out of the house. I liked the contrast between the two women in the story. Joyce was cultured, relaxed and open-minded, while Edie has clearly had a tough life. Joyce tries to get back together with Jon, but she ends up moving on anyway.

The second part talks about Joyce’s later life. She became the third wife of another man, and they appear to have a solid relation. She also seems to be in good terms with her stepson and his friends. At a party, she meets a girl, Christie, that seems familiar but she isn’t sure about where has she met her. Her stepson tells her that she is a friend and that she’s just published a book. A few days later, she goes into a bookstore and buys the book. And it’s then when she begins to think that the young woman could be Edie’s daughter. She doesn’t recall her face exactly, but she remembers she used to teach her violin. In one of the stories, the woman writes about her love for a music teacher, whose husband left her for the girl’s mother.

So in the end, Joyce is convinced that Christie is Edie’s daughter and she goes to the bookstore where she is giving autographs, hoping she recognizes her. Her hopes are based on the fact that this girl wrote about her, or so she thinks. But Christie doesn’t seem to recognize her at all, even if Joyce brings her a gift that’s very symbolic of their relation in the past.

I think that the theme of this story is the expectations we have on others and how they never will fulfill them. Joyce wanted to be happy with her husband, and then wanted Christie to be the girl she kind of remembered (maybe those memories were false as well, maybe Joyce was just projecting). The point is that we’ll never know. There’s no real way to get to meet others and to understand their motives. They will always be a mystery.

Wenlock Edge

I think this is the weirdest story in the whole book. A girl studying outside her hometown, the narrator, gets a new roommate. She’s called Nina and she is not a student at the university. After some time, Nina tells her story: she is a single mother, who is living under the patronage of some man, Mr. Purvis. At some point she became pregnant, but this man tried to force her to have an abortion. She didn’t and kept her daughter, who died after the woman who was supposed to take care of her forgot about her (she was a single mother living with Nina). Then she returned to Mr. Purvis hands, and he offered to pay for her studies. So she went to uni to see what she liked.

At some point she also reveals that Mr. Purvis pays a woman to spy on her. This is the moment when you see that there’s something really strange in their relationship. At first it seemed as she was the mistress of this man, but he clearly wanted to dominate her and subjugate her. The woman, Mrs. Winner has to follow Nina everywhere, and she is the one who takes her home (Mr. Purvis’) for the weekends. One day that Nina decides to fool this woman and they meet Ernie, the narrator’s cousin. He’s clearly smitten by her, but it’s too shy to say anything.

Sometime later, Nina tells the narrator that she is sick, so she can’t go to Mr. Purvis’ house. He, instead, invites the narrator to join him for dinner. What she doesn’t expect is that he’ll force her to get naked for their dinner. That part was really creepy. Especially because he did nothing to her, just looked at her and asked her to read some poetry. One creepy dude indeed.

When she gets home, she discovers that Nina is gone. But again, she is surprised to learn that she’s living with Ernie, who is described as a kind of a nerdy, awkward guy. Nina tells the narrator that she and Ernie are in love and that they’re going to get married.

The story end when Nina disappears, telling Ernie that she’s going to live with her uncle (Mr. Purvis, of course). One cannot help but to ask what sort of power the creepy dude had over this young and energetic girl. Again, the narrator’s perspective is very limited, so she can’t really know. Maybe everything this girl told her was a lie, a plot to get naked girls to read for Mr. Purvis. Or maybe it wasn’t.

So, again this works with the idea that the Other is unknowable. There’s simply no way of understanding completely the other and their lives. You just have to go along with everything they say and hope that’s the truth.

Deep-Holes

The story begins with a woman, Sally, preparing a pic-nic to celebrate that one of Alex’s (her husband) articles has been published in a specialized magazine (he’s a paleontologist). They go out with their three kids, Kent, Peter and Savannah. The two boys decide that wander around is more fun than sitting with their parents (normal). One of them has an accident, but Alex saves him.

The narrator describes how Kent and Alex’s relationship was very tense, but it soothed when Kent decided to study science in college. And then he disappears, and his family loses contact with him for years. After Alex dies, Savannah tries to reach him and eventually so does Sally. Kent is living in a squatting house, probably sick and in the worst living conditions ever. Of course, Sally is worried (she’s his mother, after all), but he refuses her compassion, and asks her for money.

I was sorry for Sally. She wanted to understand her son, to be able to communicate with him and he shut her off. He only wanted her money, but not a relationship with her. I guess that it has to do with the title, maybe he’s dig a (metaphorical) hole and it’s so deep his own mother can’t reach him. A little depressing, though.

Free Radicals

This story is heavily charged by the dialogue between the two characters. One is a man who has killed his family and is on the run to save his ass, while the other is an oldish woman, who was recently widowed and has cancer. At some point I felt it was weird how she was so concerned about the man killing her, considering that she was going to die anyway. But I guess there are better ways to die than others, and being killed by a psychopath wouldn’t be my choice, either. So I can understand her.

Nita, the main character, was also incredibly resourceful. True to Munro’s style, the story reveals the past of this woman little by little. We learn that she falls in love with a married man, who does the same in turn. And then she tells the man who is breaking-and-entering her house and looks fairly scary, that she has killed someone too, a young woman who her husband fell for. She claims to have poisoned her with rhubarb in a cake.

At that point I was in shock. I mean, she seemed so nice at the beginning. But she tells the story without tremor and the man is clearly impressed. Maybe that’s the reason he doesn’t kill her and just leaves with her car.

But then, the plot is twisted another time. She thinks that she should tell her husband’s first wife that she just saved her life by pretending to be her. One clever ploy, dear lady. Pretend to be a killer to bond with an actual killer.

Again, I really enjoy how Alice Munro gives her information. Little by little, making the reader fill in the gaps as they go along. It’s very interesting and gripping. I needed to know how this story ended.

Face

Alas, poor narrator! He was born with a birth mark in his face, which made it half-reddish. And, as a kid, he isn’t very aware of it. He was only aware that his father rejected him and that his mother adored him, as if she was trying to compensate him for everything. He can also vaguely remember that the things between his parents weren’t all right, and that there was a woman who came to live in the summer house, with her daughter, Nancy.

Nancy was the protagonist’s best friend as a child. And the narration is centered around one event that ended their friendship and made Nancy and her mother leave the house. One day, they were playing and found some red paint. Nancy said that she wanted to be like her friend and painted half of her face. The narrator then becomes aware of his facial defect and runs away.

It’s very interesting how the narrator treats that moment of his life. He later grew up to become a radio actor and a locator, as he was conscious that his face was very different from the others’. And all that conscience comes from that childhood moment, at least for him. So the question here is whether a moment in the past can define our whole lives.

Some Women

This is the story of a young girl who is hired to look after a sick man, because his wife works as a teacher in the university. And the story is full of women and female presence, all hovering around this one man. The narrator, the man’s mother, the wife, the masseuse who comes (Roxanne) to help the mother and ends up taking care of him as well.

The interesting thing is that we never get to know what the man thinks of all those women. We get his reactions and words from the narrator, but she doesn’t know if he finds his mother meddling or caring, or if Roxanne is annoying or nice. The man here is the ultimate mystery, and it’s about him that all those women run around.

I’m in love with Munro’s writing. So much is said in so few words. That’s talent, my friends. That’s why she got her Nobel.

Child's Play

Children are creepy. There’s no way to deny it. And the protagonist of this story is not exception. She complains about Verna, a girl who lives in her house. It is never said explicitly, but this girl is a “special-need” child. So Marlene, the narrator simply hates her. Maybe because she can’t understand her, or because she doesn’t want to stick with her for any reason.

As other Munro stories, this one gives little pieces of information. The story begins with some adults talking about “something” that happened. As the story goes on, the narrator talks about Verna and the camp she went one summer. There she met Charlene, a girl from a slightly better-off standing and they soon become best friends. Marlene has told Charlene everything about the awful Verna, and when she and other “special-needs” girls arrive to the camp, they are both horrified.

One day, as they are swimming in the lake, Verna begins swimming at her. What follows is somewhat confused, but the narrator says that when they became aware of what was happening, they had their hands over Verna’s head.

They know they’ve killed her, but they decide to keep quiet, as they are far from the rest of the girls and instructors. They come back to the beach and leave with the rest, before anyone notices that Verna is missing. That’s the event the adults are discussing at the beginning.

After the camp, the girls grow apart and never see each other again. However, one day Marlene receives a letter from Charlene’s husband, telling her that she is at the hospital with terminal cancer. When Marlene visits her, the nurse gives her a note from Charlene asking her to bring a Catholic priest to see her.
The story goes back and forth and there’s quite a bit left unsaid. For example, Marlene never acknowledges directly the fact that she has killed someone, and seems to be largely unaffected by it. Besides her lack of intimate relation, she appears to be a person completely grounded in solid grown. It is only when Charlene, the only other person who knows about the horrible deed, is about to die that she comes to terms with herself about it.

Wood

I read this as a story about trying to reach others. Roy wants to take care of his wife Lea, who is very sick. Through all the story we get the feeling that the woman is very frail and sickly, as if she’d collapse at any moment. That is, until the end, when Roy hurts his ankle and she has to drive him to the hospital. He even comments that he didn’t know that she could do it.

I think this is the story I liked the least (though I’m sure I read it half-asleep, so I’ll have to read it again), but the descriptions of nature are GLORIOUS. Alice Munro clearly nows what she is writing about, so that’s always a plus.

Too Much Happiness

This is my favorite one from the collection. I’ve always been very curious about great women in the sciences. Maybe because we never get to hear enough about them. They’re usually an afterthought, a fun fact in the corner of a text-book. I think that the only reason I never quit on Chemistry in high school was because Marie Curie didn’t deserve it. I’m weird like that. If I had known about Sophie before, I probably would’ve done a lot better in Math.

It’s interesting that usually girls (even today) are told that it doesn’t matter if they’re bad at Math, because that is a male-science. I was lucky that my parents didn’t believe that. I wasn’t brilliant in Math because it wasn’t part of my interests, not because I was a girl. And I’ll say my dad tried several times to get me interested. If I ever have a daughter, I’ll show her this story, so she can know that there are not limits to what she can do.

The narration in the story is very simple, but powerful. Even with all the time jumps (which I think are a mark of Munro’s trade), it was easy to understand and to follow. And I liked that it didn’t focus on Sophie’s work, but also in her personal life, in her feelings, in her aspirations. It is a compelling story about a strong woman who didn’t let anyone stop her dreams. Even if she had everything against her, she kept going on. And she probably was the antecedent of every female professor in those traditional European universities. I mean, we all know that women participation in academia is growing every year. But almost every field is still quite male-dominated. Think about the important Shakespearean critics, or Economists, or Mathematicians. Does any woman pop up immediately? I think that it shows that there’s still a long way to run. So, thanks to Alice Munro for reminding us about Sophie.

As it probably show in this review, I really loved this book and I'm waiting to read more stuff by Munro because she knows how it's done.