I thought I’d read this story decades ago, but it turns out to only have been published in 2012, so I suppose it’s become mixed-up with one or more other Munro stories from over the years. She is such an encompassing presence that the stories do seem to merge together into a sense of a single person, a kindly presence who has known great sorrow and is far more passionate than she appears.
‘Amundsen’ tells the tale of a young teacher arriving in a small Canadian town to work in the classroom of a sanatorium dedicated to those suffering from tuberculosis. It has the precise world-building of a refined historical novel but that’s only the background – the foreground, of the narrator and the doctor with whom she falls in love – is told with an exquisite eye for gesture, nuance and speech and what they say about character. It’s an utterly delightful and softly tragic thing, as are all the Munro stories I’ve read.
PS: I’ve just looked Munro up on Wikipedia, and I find the bookshop she founded with her first husband James is still open. It’s a grandly opulent place, oddly out of keeping with her stories. The website is https://www.munrobooks.com
First published in The New Yorker. Collected in Dear Life, Chatto & Windus, 2012
A Personal Anthology 