The Love of a Good Woman

Alice Munro might not think of herself as a feminist author (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/on-dear-life-an-interview-with-alice-munro), but she sure reads like one, in the best possible way. I also sometimes struggle with collections of short stories - if a novel's theme is like hitting a big gong and letting the reverberations ripple out into the air over the course of the book, sometimes a collection of short stories feels to me like someone keeps hitting a smaller gong over and over again. I did not have this struggle with Munro, despite my previous experience of her being restricted to single stories at a time in The New Yorker. I don't think I could ever get tired of what she has to say, and the thematic consistencies across her stories feel like meaningfully different variations on answers to her larger questions.