Strayed led me to Munro, whose portrayals of dreamy and isolated, somewhat cold and ambitious women were ideal for my undergraduate years.
This particular story is about a girl coming of age in rural Ontario, dissatisfied with her provincial roots and fascinated by a cousin of her father’s, Alfrida. Alfrida has left for the big city, though that departure has come with the disillusionment that many of Munro’s women suffer. There is a momentum to this story, a sense that there is something to be worked out, that keeps the reader going until the end, where the concluding shock is delivered with grace. But it’s also about the ruthlessness it takes to write about your family.
“If you have something to tell that will stagger someone, and you’ve told it, and it has done so, there has to be a balmy moment of power.”
Published in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, McClelland & Stewart, 2001, and collected in New Selected Stories, 2011, and Family Furnishings, Knopf, 2014
A Personal Anthology 