Runaway by Alice Munro

Runaway by Alice Munro

Runaway is the first story in this stunning collection, sure to be a runaway success. All of the eight stories here are new, published in book form for the first time. Two of the eight have never appeared anywhere, so this will be a special feast for the millions of Munro fans around the world.
Miraculously, these stories seem to have been written by a young writer at the peak of her powers. Alice Munro's central characters range from 14-year-old Lauren in Trespass, through the young couple in Runaway, whose helpful older neighbour intervenes to help the wife escape, all the way to a 70-year-old woman meeting a friend of her youth on a Vancouver street and sitting with him to recall their tangled lives fifty years earlier, through a web of cheerful lies.
Three of the stories, Chance, Soon, and Silence, are linked, showing us how the young teacher Juliet meets her fisherman lover on a train (and, by terrible chance, visits his B.C. home on the day after his wife's funeral); how, years later, she brings baby Penelope back east to show her parents and learns sad secrets about their marriage; and how, twenty years on, she visits the estranged Penelope in her cult-like B.C. community. The result is more powerful than most novels, a quality in Alice Munro's stories that has been noted by many reviewers.
The final story, Powers, spans 50 years and runs from Goderich to Vancouver and involves a cast of four characters, each of whom steps forward to dominate the scene, not least Tessa, the plain girl whose psychic powers take her on the vaudeville circuit. But it is Alice Munro's own powers that dominate this collection and that will amaze reviewers and readers. Howcan she keep getting better? How can any one person know so much about the heads and hearts of so many different people? And how can she weave them together in stories that delight academics and ordinary readers alike, making each new Alice Munro book a runaway bestseller?

From the Hardcover edition.

Now 78, Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published fourteen previous books -- Dance of the Happy Shades; Lives of Girls and Women, Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You;Who Do You Think You Are?; The Moons of Jupiter; The Progress of Love; Friend of My Youth; Open Secrets; Selected Stories; The Love of a Good Woman; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Runaway; The View from Castle Rock; and Alice Munro's Best.During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the recent Man Booker International Prize given to her in Dublin for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.
Here at home she has won too many awards to list, including three Governor General's Literary Awards, two Giller Prizes, several Trillium Prizes and a number of Libris Awards. Elsewhere she has won the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England's W. H. Smith Book Award, Italy's Pescara prize, the United States' National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Edward MacDowell Medal in literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Night, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages.
Alice Munro divides her time between Clinton, Ontario, and Comox, British Columbia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781400077915
ISBN 10	1400077915
Title	Runaway
Author	Alice Munro
Series	Vintage International
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2005-11-08
Number of pages	352
Prizes	Winner of Man Booker International Prize 2009
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.