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Alice Munro. Selected Stories. New York. Knopf. 1996. 545 pages. $30. ISBN 0-679-44627-3.
There is an enigmatic and seductive quality about Alice Munro's stories. Some of them begin slowly, seemingly dependent upon the faithfulness of the reader to trust that there will be a reward to this languorous beginning. Others thrust us into the milieu of the first-person narrator with more energy. No matter what the beginning, however, the reader is invariably lured into the lives of the characters, often wishing that they would live on longer in these pages. Ultimately, the twenty-eight stories in the collection under review, covering the period from 1961 to the present, deliver complete satisfaction.
The short story is a difficult genre. Too many characters and too much plot and you have a novel; too little and you have a failed narrative. The delicate equilibrium...