Author Description

Alice Munro's Standing As A Major Contemporary Author Has Long Been Acknowledged In Her Native Canada And, Especially, Among Her Fellow Writers. Her Reputation Has Developed Slowly, From Small Magazines And Radio In The Fifties, To Three Governor General's Awards And Regular Appearances In The New Yorker. As A Short Story Writer, She Is Working Within A Critically Neglected Genre. Yet Short Fiction Displays An Intensity Of Language And Experience That Is Rarely Sustainable Across Longer Forms. Munro's Ten Collections, Including Lives Of Girls And Women, Open Secrets And The Love Of A Good Woman Cross Generic Boundaries, Condensing Whole Lifetimes Within Complex Narrative Structures. Past And Present, Memory And Fantasy, Art And Fiction, Intermingle. Drawing On Bakhtinian Theory, Ailsa Cox Looks At Ways In Which Munro Develops The Short Story's Affinity With The Present Moment To Suggest A Fluid And Ever-changing Reality.--jacket. Ailsa Cox. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 105-109) And Index.