Growing old gracefully

>> Alice Munro's latest, Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage, is as powerful as ever

by JULIET WATERS

A few months ago, the books editor of the Chicago Sun-Times included in his fall preview Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage by Alice Munro, "the noted British author." There are some major Canadian writers you could make that mistake about: Mavis Gallant or Michael Ondaatje, who often set their work in other countries. And some you can't because their work is so inextricably bound to Canada: Mordecai Richler, perhaps, and Alice Munro definitely. It is, I guess, a testament to her current stature that a books editor at a major American newspaper would recommend her without, apparently, really having read her.

To be fair to other Americans, who are too easy a target these days, Munro did win their biggest award, the National Critics award, for her last book. And a quick online search reveals most books editors know her nationality and one even went so far as to call her the greatest living short story writer.

Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage will neither put a dent in her reputation, nor confuse anyone about her Canadian-ness. On page 1 of the title story, we are introduced to a woman who is sending furniture by train from a small town just outside London, Ontario to Gdynia, Saskatchewan. She learns on the next page that to follow this furniture she will have to take a train from Sudbury to Montreal, and then hitch onto the Montreal trains to Port Arthur and then to Kenora. We will learn that "the town had changed, even in the time Johanna had been here. Trade was moving out to the highway, where there was a new discount store and a Canadian Tire and a motel with a lounge and topless dancers." By about the fifth page most Canadians will find themselves, for a change, thoroughly absorbed in their own country.

The terrors of anthrax, of planes and bombs will be replaced with the subjects of vintage Munro: the cruelty of restless, intelligent teenagers; the secret sexuality of spinsters; the pathos of philanderers; and more and more the dark, merciless irony of death and old age.

Unbelievably, after nine books, it seems as though Munro's not only gaining in reputation, but also power. Her stories are as wise as they've ever been, but more surprising. Eroticism has always fuelled her work--add the sting of death and the remarkable ways the human soul finds to heal itself, and you have a collection that is as good as any of her best work.

Some stories stand out above the others. The title story seems to condense all of her favourite themes and characters into a small symphony of Munro's most resonant subjects. Johanna, a charmless middle-aged woman is sending furniture to a man she's been corresponding with and who she believes is intending to marry her. His letters have actually been written by two nasty, bored teenagers. Longtime Munro readers will probably have expectations of what might happen, but at every page "Hateship" takes an unforeseen turn, and astonishes with its resolution.

In "Floating Bridge," a woman possibly in remission from cancer, finds a startling source of vitality. In "Comfort," we learn not only of secret intimacies between characters, but what exactly happens to dead bodies when they've been prepared for visitation. It's an ironic piece of realism accompanying the death of a bitterly angry high school biology teacher whose career has been brought to an end by local creationists.

In "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," the closing story, an ageing philanderer must watch helplessly as the wife he adores develops Alzheimer's, forgets him and falls deeply in love with another patient at the nursing home. What he must do to achieve redemption is a perfect blend of Munro's compassion and dark sense of tragi-comedy. The story is a tour de force, as is this collection.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro, McLelland & Stewart, hc, 322pp, $34.95