Publication
Vintage (1991), 288 p.
Original publication date
1990
Collections
Genres
Subjects
Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 1990)
Governor General's Literary Award (Finalist — 1990)
Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Winner — 1991)
Trillium Book Award (Winner — English — 1991)
Notable Books List (1991)
Description
A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger. The ten stories in this collection not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.
User reviews
LibraryThing member sovietsong
A wonderful read, like all Alice Munro books.
LibraryThing member EdwardC
Munro is argueably the best writer of the short story in the English language. Of her twelve or so collections of short fiction, this, I think, is my favorite. But it's like trying to choose which child one love's best.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Friend of My Youth is a collection of short stories all based on the lives of women.
"Friend of My Youth" is the opening story. Imagine hearing a story from your mother, something that happened long before you were born, but has stayed in your mother's mind all this time and important enough to be
"Friend of My Youth" is the opening story. Imagine hearing a story from your mother, something that happened long before you were born, but has stayed in your mother's mind all this time and important enough to be
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told to you when you were old enough. But, and this is the catch, you don't know how it ends, even after your mother's death. You simply don't know the end. And so begins Friend of My Youth. The connection through all of the stories are women. They have lead roles emotionally as well as physically. Show Less
LibraryThing member iayork
Powerful, understated characters leave one thinking: Reading stories such as "Differently," about a woman's reminiscences and regret about the people of her past made me reflect that life turns out differently than our original aspirations. It isn't always regret, but it is rarely indifferent. As
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soon as I finished a story, I immediately wanted to reread it, and understand the character better. These are beautiful, gentle stories about lives that sometimes meander, sometimes change abruptly, but that are always determined by the choices and accidents of living. Munro's love, sometimes curiosity, for her characters is a privilege to experience. Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
Down-beat tales of small town life in Ontario. She seems to be fond of writing about people whose lives have been a disappointment to them. Well-written and very interesting, if a trifle depressing.
LibraryThing member Periodista
Whew! She is so obsessed with death in these stories. And this was published in 1990. I've noticed it in recent volumes, but it's a preoccupation that would be expected at her age.
Anyway, you know what you're getting with Munro: expertly crafted stories about women, unreliable men, extramarital
But she does end up in Scotland. In that case, a widow is visiting a place where her husband was stationed during WW2 and happens upon the young girlfriend of her husband's youth. In later books, one deduces that Munro herself went back to Scotland to trace her own family's emigration.
There is some foreshadowing here of Munro's "historical" stories which dominated (at least in my mind) View from Castle Rock. Notably "Maneseteung", in which the life of a town's late 19th century "poetess" is imagined. (Menseteung being a river.). It's just so easy for me to imagine: in a small town, you know the bare outlines--the dates, the slim volume, maybe the cemetery stone--of some town's claim to fame. And she fills it in: the rhythms of Almeda Roth's life and then this barely there acquaintance with the hardworking Jarvis Poulter--walks to church-- that could have become marriage.
"But he follows. He follows her as far as the back door and into the back hall. He speaks to her in a tone of harsh joviality that she has never before heard from him .. He had not been able to imagine her as a wife. Now that is possible. He is sufficiently stirred by her loosened hair--prematurely gray but thick and soft--her flushed face, her light clothing, which nobody but a husband should see. And by her indiscretion, her agitation, her foolishness, her need?"
Even if the subject matter isn't of much interest, writers must or should read her for mastery of craft. There's the efficient way she sketches a character. I kept noticing how much she moves back and forth in time but it's all so seamless. She often starts with a very vivid childhood memory, often involving a childhood friend or adversary, and then we're way ahead somewhere in adulthood. Oh, she might shift back again but I become so absorbed in the present day, I usually forget how the story started. Yet it's always tightly tied together again. Sure, that childhood incident or the haphazard mother explains something about the way the adult *is* but the dots are never straight.
The story I know I had read before, perhaps long ago in an anthology, was "Differently." It's a familiar Munro situation: the youngish married mother, Georgia, in Vancouver, reacting to the quakes of the early 1970s, has an affair that ultimately ends her marriage. But I had totally forgotten the main details, the centrality of Georgia's friendship with another (philandering) woman. And that Georgia has to leave her husband because she fell so easily into an affair with a man she doesn't care about at all.
Anyway, you know what you're getting with Munro: expertly crafted stories about women, unreliable men, extramarital
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affairs. Usually (too often, really) the women are girls when Munro was (40-50s) and some to a pivotal age as the sexual revolution hit. Almost always here, the stores take place somewhere in Ontario.But she does end up in Scotland. In that case, a widow is visiting a place where her husband was stationed during WW2 and happens upon the young girlfriend of her husband's youth. In later books, one deduces that Munro herself went back to Scotland to trace her own family's emigration.
There is some foreshadowing here of Munro's "historical" stories which dominated (at least in my mind) View from Castle Rock. Notably "Maneseteung", in which the life of a town's late 19th century "poetess" is imagined. (Menseteung being a river.). It's just so easy for me to imagine: in a small town, you know the bare outlines--the dates, the slim volume, maybe the cemetery stone--of some town's claim to fame. And she fills it in: the rhythms of Almeda Roth's life and then this barely there acquaintance with the hardworking Jarvis Poulter--walks to church-- that could have become marriage.
"But he follows. He follows her as far as the back door and into the back hall. He speaks to her in a tone of harsh joviality that she has never before heard from him .. He had not been able to imagine her as a wife. Now that is possible. He is sufficiently stirred by her loosened hair--prematurely gray but thick and soft--her flushed face, her light clothing, which nobody but a husband should see. And by her indiscretion, her agitation, her foolishness, her need?"
Even if the subject matter isn't of much interest, writers must or should read her for mastery of craft. There's the efficient way she sketches a character. I kept noticing how much she moves back and forth in time but it's all so seamless. She often starts with a very vivid childhood memory, often involving a childhood friend or adversary, and then we're way ahead somewhere in adulthood. Oh, she might shift back again but I become so absorbed in the present day, I usually forget how the story started. Yet it's always tightly tied together again. Sure, that childhood incident or the haphazard mother explains something about the way the adult *is* but the dots are never straight.
The story I know I had read before, perhaps long ago in an anthology, was "Differently." It's a familiar Munro situation: the youngish married mother, Georgia, in Vancouver, reacting to the quakes of the early 1970s, has an affair that ultimately ends her marriage. But I had totally forgotten the main details, the centrality of Georgia's friendship with another (philandering) woman. And that Georgia has to leave her husband because she fell so easily into an affair with a man she doesn't care about at all.
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LibraryThing member lamour
Another wonderful collection of short stories by the master. Each story is layered with intricate detail that culminates in a finish that often is life continuing on. Her descriptions of trees, the street in a small town or the face of one of her characters are like looking at a picture.
The stories
The stories
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are mainly about women but we see men too strong and frequently weak. The stories are mainly set along the shore of Lake Huron and usually in rural or small town settings and as grew up on a farm in rural South West Ontario, they remind me of my youth. Show Less
LibraryThing member briannad84
I liked this book better than the others I've read.
LibraryThing member thorold
Ten Alice Munro stories from the eighties, all of them written for either the Atlantic or the New Yorker. That's probably all you need to say to make it clear that this is a book we should all read...
As you would expect, the stories are mostly about people - mainly middle-aged women from the more
There's also lots of nice rural/small town Canadian atmosphere, much of it apparently from the forties and fifties, and typically we are in a world of small shopkeepers, schoolteachers, farmers and nurses, only rarely moving into the "professional classes".
As you would expect, the stories are mostly about people - mainly middle-aged women from the more
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provincial parts of Canada - whose businesses, houses, lovers, husbands, children (and often also their own bodies) have not performed as they would have hoped. But they also often seem to be stories about the processes through which life turns into story, and where we learn about the narrator or viewpoint character through a story they are telling or trying to uncover. Not to mention guest appearances by the Border ballad "Tam Lin" and a chunk of Walter Savage Landor...There's also lots of nice rural/small town Canadian atmosphere, much of it apparently from the forties and fifties, and typically we are in a world of small shopkeepers, schoolteachers, farmers and nurses, only rarely moving into the "professional classes".
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LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
A fine collection of stories from this year's Nobel prize winner. Many of these deal with women who came of age in the '50s discovering themselves in the '70s, and they are simply brilliant. Frequently I found myself at the end of a story, having been totally absorbed all along, wondering "how
Reviewed in 2013
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exactly did she get me here?". I re-read a couple of them, just for the pleasure of watching it all unfold when I knew how it would come out. The stories catch you up the way a novel does, and even if the characters fail to find full satisfaction, I was not disappointed once.Reviewed in 2013
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9780099820604
Physical description
288 p.; 5.08 inches
Pages
288