Alice Munro, página 2 de 7

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**Born into the back streets of a small Canadian town, Rose battled incessantly with her practical and shrewd stepmother, Flo, who cowed her with tales of her own past and warnings of the dangerous world outside. But Rose was ambitious - she won a scholarship and left for Toronto where she married Patrick. She was his Beggar Maid, ''meek and voluptuous, with her shy white feet'', and he was her knight, content to sit and adore her.Alice Munro''s wonderful collection of stories reads like a novel following Rose''s life as she moves away from her impoverished roots and forges her own path in the world.

Comment vider des dindes peut marquer à jamais une jeune fille de 14 ans... Comment un cadeau simple et doux comme un sac de petites algues peut réchauffer un coeur désespéré... Douze nouvelles compo

Literatura en ruso: ficción. Novela corta.

Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father''s fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women-her mother, an agnostic, opinionted woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother''s boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence.Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro''s unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.

Brilliantly paced, lit with sparks of danger and underlying menace, these are dazzling, provocative stories about Svengali men, and radical women who outmanoeuvre them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments which change or haunt a life.

"Pieno di trabocchetti e inganni della memoria e il ""percorso dell''amore"": nel primo racconto di questa raccolta di Alice Munro, una donna divorziata torna a visitare la casa che fu dei genitori; le si presenta il vivido ricordo di un tentativo di suicidio di sua madre, e quello altrettanto nitido di una scena in cucina: sua madre che brucia una quantita di soldi nella stufa sotto lo sguardo accondiscendente del padre... forse ricordi veri, forse scene immaginate, che la conducono pero alla scoperta, molto reale, del legame profondo che univa i genitori. Pieno di trabocchetti e inganni e anche, di solito, il percorso della scrittura di Alice Munro, famosa per le improvvise svolte che riesce a impartire alle storie che racconta. Quella che inizia come una descrizione, o rievocazione, di una tranquilla scena familiare, prende poi la piega inaspettata del dramma, della tragedia: a volte rimossa, riposta in un angolo della memoria, altre volte ossessivamente presente a impedire ogni percorso di vita. "

"Le protagoniste di ""Le lune di Giove"" sono donne a una svolta: una svolta dell''eta o del gusto, della rabbia o della passione, una delle piccole o grandi svolte quotidiane che plasmano le vite e i caratteri, e che potrebbero forse passare inavvertite non fosse per l''intelligenza vivida e acuminata che le individua e le svela. Per molte di loro la svolta e amorosa, e in qualche raro caso la reazione rabbiosamente solutiva. La protagonista di ""Agganci"" replica al commento sarcastico del marito su una zia che solo lei si sente in diritto di disprezzare con il lancio stupefacente di una torta al limone nel suo piatto di pirex. Piu spesso il verdetto e meno teatrale ma ugualmente definitivo. La rinuncia di Valerie al gioco della seduzione viene cosi commentata in ""Festa di fine estate"": ""II suo modo di vivere, la sua persona, ricordano all''interlocutore come l''amore non sia ne buono ne onesto e come non contribuisca alla felicita della gente in maniera affidabile"". Ma non c''e alcuna autocommiserazione nella rinuncia; semmai una buona dose di pragmatismo. E l''imperativo categorico di non voltarsi mai indietro: ""Quanto alla vita che e sepolta qui, meglio pensarci su due volte, prima di rimpiangerla"". "

"La prima parte del volume e dedicata alle vicende di un ramo della famiglla di Alice Munro, i Laidlaw, a partire dai primi anni del Settecento. I suoi antenati vivevano nella Ettrick Valley, nelle Lowlands scozzesi, immersi in un''atmosfera che scolora nella leggenda folklorica, tra prove d''ardimento e incontri con fantasmi e folletti. Fino a quando la famiglia si imbarca verso il sospirato Nuovo Mondo. Il microcosmo della nave diventa per ognuno il segno di un irreversibile mutamento. Quando una delle protagoniste, rimasta vedova, affronta insieme ai suoi cinque bambini il viaggio su un carro trainato dai buoi per trasferirsi dall''Illinois in Ontario, il figlio maggiore inscena il rapimento del piu piccolo per far fare dietro front alla famiglia, ma il piano viene sventato. Nel racconto seguente compare il padre dell''autrice: agricoltore, cacciatore, allevatore di volpi e guardiano notturno in una fonderia. In seguito compare Alice scolara; e la volta poi di una precoce esperienza sentimentale sotto i rami di un melo in fiore e di quella come donna di servizio presso una lussuosa villa. Nel racconto ""A casa"", la scrittrice ormai affermata torna a trovare il padre da poco risposatosi; altrove un''Alice sessantenne vaga nei cimiteri di campagna insieme al secondo marito, e in attesa di una biopsia per un sospetto tumore al seno, per fortuna un falso allarme. L''epilogo chiude il cerchio con una visita in IIIinois alla ricerca della tomba del bis-bisnonno William Lainlaw. "

In questa raccolta la Munro conferma le sue qualita narrandoci una manciatadi esistenze dove avvenimenti inattesi o particolari dimenticati modificano ilcorso delle cose. Una cameriera dai capelli rossi, nuova arrivata in unavecchia dimora, viene per caso coinvolta nello scherzo di una ragazzina. Unastudentessa universitaria si reca per la prima volta in visita a un'anzianazia e, riconoscendo un mobile di famiglia, scopre un segreto di cui non era aconoscenza. Una paziente giovane e in fin di vita trova un'inaspettatasperanza di proiettarsi nel futuro. Una donna ricorda un amore brevissimo eche tuttavia ha modificato per sempre il suo vivere.

¿Bastan un beso robado, un salto desde un tren en marcha, la sombra de una mujer que me rodea alrededor de una casa, una borrachera de media tarde o las preguntas arriesgadas de una niña para conformar un mundo que se baste a si mismo y cuente la vida entera? Si quien escribe es Alice Munro un simple adjetivo sirve para cruzar las fronteras de la anecdota y colocarnos en el lugar donde nacen los sentimientos y las emociones.La gran autora canadiense nos sorprende de nuevo con Mi vida querida , una coleccion de cuentos donde vemos a hombres y mujeres obligados a traficar con la vida sin mas recursos que su humanidad. Comienzos, finales, virajes del destino... y de repente, cuando creiamos queel relato llegaria a su obvia conclusion, Munro nos invita a dar otra vuelta de tuerca que cambia el fluir de los acontecimientos y emociona al lector, mostrando hasta que punto esa vida cotidiana que tanto nos cansa puede llegar a ser extraordinaria.Cierran el volumen unas paginas que Munro dedica a su propia vida, unas notas esplendidas donde lo personal se funde con la ficcion, pues, en palabras de la misma autora"la autobiografia vive en la forma, mas que en el contenido.""La lectura que piden los cuentos de Mi vida querida no es la de la prosa sino la de la poesia... una revelacion de algo que no se agota porque esta en las palabras y un poco mas alla de ellas."Antonio Muñoz Molina

Ten collections of stories and one novel have made Alice Munro one of the most praised fiction writers of our time. In The View from Castle Rock her full range of gifts is on display: indelible characters, deep insights about human behavior and relationships, vibrant prose, and seductive, suspenseful storytelling. Munro, in a foreword, tells how, a decade ago, she began looking into her family history, going all the way back to 18th-century Scotland. This material eventually became the stories presented here in part 1, "No Advantages." Munro also worked on "a special set of stories," none of which she included in previous collections, because they were "rather more personal than the other stories I had written." They now appear here in part 2, "Home." With both parts, Munro says, she has had a free hand with invention. Munro has used personal material in her fiction before, but at 75, she has given us something much closer to autobiography. Much of the book concerns people who have died, and places and ways of life that no longer exist or have been completely transformed, and though Munro is temperamentally unsentimental the mood is often elegiac. One difficulty that can arise with this kind of hybrid work is that the reader is likely to be distracted by the itch to know whether an event really occurred, or how much has been made up or embellished. In the title story, the reader is explicitly told that almost everything has been invented, and this enthralling multilayered narrative about an early 19th-century Scottish family''s voyage to the New World is the high point of the collection. On the other hand, "What Do You Want to Know For?" at the heart of which is an account of a cancer scare Munro experienced, reads like pure memoir and seems not only thin by comparison but insufficiently imagined as a short story. Perhaps none of the stories here is quite up to the mastery of earlier Munro stories such as "The Beggar Maid" or "The Albanian Virgin." But getting this close to the core of the girl who would become the master is a privilege and a pleasure not to be missed. And reliably as ever when the subject is human experience, Munro''s stories-whatever the proportions of fiction and fact-always bring us the truth. (Nov.) Sigrid Nunez''s most recent novel, The Last of He

On a clear day, you could see 'America' from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather, James Laidlaw, when he had drink taken. Then, in 1818, Laidlaw left the parish of 'no advantages', of banked Presbyterian emotions and uncanny tales - where, like his more famous cousin James Hogg, he was born and bred - and sailed to the new world with his family. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants, among them the author herself. They were a Spartan lot, who kept to themselves; showing off was frowned on, and fear was commonplace, at least for females ...But opportunities present themselves for two strong-minded women in a ship's close quarters; a father dies, and a baby vanishes en route from Illinois to Canada; another story hints at incest; childhood is short and hazardous. This is family history where imperfect recollections blur into fiction, where the past shows through the present like the tracks of a glacier on a geological map. First love flowers under an apple tree while lust rears its head in a barn; a restless mother with ideas beyond her station declines painfully; a father farms fox fur and turkeys; a clever girl escapes to college and then into a hasty marriage. Beneath the ordinary landscape there's a different story - evocative, frightening, sexy, unexpected, gripping. Alice Munro tells it like no other.

A Best Book of the Year: "San Francisco Chronicle," NPR, "Minneapolis Star Tribune" Here is a selection of Munro s most accomplished and powerfully affecting short fiction from the last two decades, a companion volume to"A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968 1994." These stories encompass the fullness of humanexperience, from thewild exhilaration of first love (in Passion ) to the punishing consequences of leaving home ( Runaway ) or ending a marriage ( The Children Stay ). And in stories that Munro has described as closer to the truth than usual Dear Life, Working for a Living, and Home we glimpse the author s own life. Subtly honed with her hallmark precision, grace, and compassion, these stories illuminate the quotidian yet astonishing particularities in the lives of men and women, parents and children, friends and lovers as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, suffer defeat, set off into the unknown, or find a way to be in the world."

Spanning almost thirty years and settings that range from big cities to small towns and farmsteads of rural Canada, this magnificent collection brings together twenty-eight stories by a writer of unparalleled wit, generosity, and emotional power. In A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 19681994, Alice Munro makes lives that seem small unfold until they are revealed to be as spacious as prairies and locates the moments of love and betrayal, desire and forgiveness, that change those lives forever.A traveling salesman during the Depression takes his children with him on an impromptu visit to a former girlfriend. A poor girl steels herself to marry a rich fiance she cant quite manage to love. An abandoned woman tries to choose between the opposing pleasures of seduction and solitude. To read these stories is to succumb to the spell of a true narrative sorcerer, a writer who enchants her readers utterly even as she restores them to their truest selves.

La vida de la gente, en Jubilee como en todas partes, era aburrida, simple, asombrosa e insondable# cuevas profundas cubiertas de linóleo de cocina. Bastan estas pocas palabras para reconocer el talento de una esplendida narradora y colarse en la vida de Del Jordan, una chiquilla que vive con sus padres en el pueblo de Jubilee. Del empieza contando su dia a dia, su relacion con la familia, los vecinos y los amigos, y pronto descubrimos que esa niña sabe observar el mundo y sacar buen provecho de lo que ve: compadece la poquedad del padre, admira el arrojo de la madre, que deja la granja para dedicarse a vender enciclopedias por los alrededores, y comprende que tarde o temprano llega el momento en que hay que elegir entre una risueña mediocridad #hogar, iglesia, matrimonio, hijos- y otras opciones mas interesantes y arriesgadas. Ese descubrimiento es tambien el de la vocacion literaria, una suerte de llamada, de deber para con el mundo. Esta deliciosa novela, que la autora escribio cuando tenia cuarenta años, es #autobiografica en la forma, que no en los contenidos#, como comenta ironicamente la misma Alice Munro. Traducida por primera vez al castellano, La vida de las mujeres muestra ya toda la maestria y el modo peculiar de ver la realidad que ha distinguido la obra posterior de esta gran figura de las letras contemporaneas.

In den dreizehn Erzahlungen ihres zweiten Erzahlbandes Was ich dir schon immer sagen wollte von 1974, der jetzt erstmals auf Deutsch erscheint, stellt Alice Munro ihre prazise Beobachtungsgabe und den ihr eigenen unpratenziosen Erzahlstil, fur die sie in unseren Tagen so beruhmt ist, unter Beweis. Diese Meisterschaft lie keinen geringeren als John Updike sie mit Tschechow vergleichen, und Jonathan Franzen greift den Vergleich immer gerne wieder auf, wenn er von Alice Munro schwarmt und sie in seinen Interviews unermudlich als mogliche nordamerikanische Literaturnobelpreistragerin ins Spiel bringt.Flirrend zwischen Hoffnung und Liebe, Zorn und Versohnung suchen die Schwestern, Mutter, Tochter, Tanten, Gromutter und Freundinnen in diesen Geschichten immer neue Wege, ihre Vergangenheit und ihre Gegenwart - und das, was sie von der Zukunft zu wissen glauben - auszusohnen.