Too much happiness
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Average rating3.8
Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers--the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the "deep-holes" in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy's disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky--a late-nineteenth-century Russian emigre and mathematician--on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives.Too Much Happiness is a compelling, provocative--even daring--collection.From the Hardcover edition.
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Munro's new book of short stories is filled with human beings. Just when you think you've found a character above reproach, though, Munro says to look again, and you find the ice has melted in your hands. You get the sense that Munro is very, very good at seeing into the hearts of people and finding we all come up short. The title is a cruel twist on the stories inside; an objective observer of these lives doesn't find much happiness at all here. But is that really the case? It's something—a little glimmer of happiness, maybe, perhaps some small happiness that comes from making it through troubles—that keeps these people moving along through their difficult lives.
Quite honestly, does anyone rival Munro's range? The stories in this collection, and there is not one dud, are all over the place in topic but still remain solid with a quality of writing that is so above what I usually find. Honestly, the woman is a goddess. I'm going to slowly work my way through her entire canon over my lifetime, and managed two collections and a bunch of singles this year alone. I cannot express my love for this woman's writing with mere words. She describes characters in a way that makes them fully formed in your head, even side characters.
Anyhoo, I savored this collection. I read it over the month of November, pausing between stories to let them sink in before starting the next one. While I loved each of them, my personal favorites were: Dimension, Wood, and Too Much Happiness. A tale of a woman in love with a murderer, a couple whose love is so pure, and a biopic about a female mathematician.
So freaking good.
