The following are three linked stories by Alice Munro, about the life of Juliette, an intelligent successful woman and mother. In the story ‘Chance’, Juliette is a young post-graduate student travelling by bus and ferry to meet Eric, a man she had previously met on a train following the suicide of another passenger. In ‘Soon’, we see Juliette, now a young mother, of Penelope, returning to visit her parents and feeling out of place in their home, back in the small town of her childhood. She is soon reminded of the old-fashioned prejudice and hostility of neighbours that she experienced as an ambitious clever young woman, and how it has affected, and been accommodated by, her parents. In ‘Silence’, Juliette, is middle-aged and waiting for the return of an adult Penelope from a spiritual retreat, while it becomes increasingly clear that Penelope may never return to her.
“My father used to say of someone he disliked, that he had no use for that person. Couldn’t those words mean simply what they say? Penelope does not have a use for me. Maybe she can’t stand me. It’s possible.”
Juliette, in ‘Silence’, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, (especially since the real-life revelations of Alice Munro’s daughter in recent years) and possibly there is much that has been held back by Munro in these stories. Yet there is still a cautious careful exploration of the shame and damage suffered by women who go on to damage their daughters in turn. The three stories of Juliette show a whole life in glimpses: the moments of bad choices and irredeemable mistakes and the uneasy resignation of old age.
‘Chance’, ‘Soon’ and ‘Silence’ all first published in The New Yorker, and available to subscribers to read here, here and here. All three collected in Runaway, Vintage, 2005, and then in New Selected Stories, 2011 and Lying under the Apple Tree, 2014
A Personal Anthology 