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    Dear Life
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    Dear Life
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    Dear Life
    Audiobook9 hours

    Dear Life

    Written by Alice Munro

    Narrated by Liza Ross, Multiple Narrators and Robert Slade

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Moments of change, chance encounters, twists of fate that create a new way of thinking or being: the stories in Dear Life build to form a radiant, indelible portrait of just how dangerous and strange ordinary life can be. The collection includes four powerful pieces, 'Autobiographical in Feeling', set during the time of Munro's own childhood, in the area where she grew up.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateFeb 7, 2013
    ISBN9781471227141
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Dear Life

    4/5

    610 ratings55 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Alice Munro is a powerful storyteller. Her short stories amaze me. Using uncomplicated language, she moves effortlessly around in time and place. The autobiographical pieces were wonderful. I listened to it all on a rather long car journey. I'm looking forward to reading her words myself.
    • 4/5
      Nice stories, very humane, but a little sad. Life in rural Canada mid-century.
    • 3/5
      A selection of short stories a sub set of which are introduced as being biographical in feeling if not in fact. There's a lot of uncertainty in these stories, there is very little resolution and a sense of something being out of reach. They have a sense of place, though, and feel to be set in a past time. It's not up beat, but it is enveloping.
    • 3/5
      Heard as an audiobook, and the reader's measured accent was just right for the (seemingly) measured pace of the stories. It was good to listen to while driving, off & on, which enforced a pause between stories. At some point I did think that she keeps going on and on about details which really don't have a point, but I may have been more accepting if I had been able to read this.
    • 5/5
      Dear Life is a highly interesting book, comprised of concisely written stories that tell so much about this complicated thing called life.
    • 5/5
      I could have read this one in about half the time, but I had to take a pause between each story and just let it soak in. I'm a short story fan in general, but Munro takes the genre to another level. A collection of very odd love stories, missed opportunities, solitude that isn't loneliness, perfectly pitched dialogue, train rides filled with meaning, and so so so much wonderful Canada. The collection ends with a set of stories that Munro notes are about as autobiographical as she is going to get. If you like good writing, you will like this one.
    • 5/5
      Dear life, as in "holding on for ..." And, like this expression, many of the stories here are set in times when it was common to hear it. In that way, these stories feel nostalgic. Although I remember this expression from childhood - I can hear it even now - I wonder if it evokes the same feeling in my children.

      Even so, each story holds a truth that is felt today. Most are about women, and their own dear life. Oftentimes there is a controlling man in the picture, but just as often there is not; sometimes it is the woman who provokes. The themes, may be familiar - for instance, a woman whose lover's old girl friend unexpectedly turns up, one who leaves a loving but routine family for some excitement with a younger man, one who is jilted on the day of her wedding - but written in stories that unfold gently in spare but exquisite prose and in surprising ways, expressing just the right feeling or idea.

      The last four stories are close to autobiographical and portray the thoughts and feelings of a young girl who struggles to understand her world in rural western Ontario. The last story, and the namesake of the collection is particularly poignant.

      I've enjoyed Munro's stories for years. In fact, I had read some of these wonderful ones before. I continue to admire her work, so worthy of the many prizes she's won, including the Nobel Prize for Literature.
    • 3/5
      This collection of stories just didn't grab me like I expected them to. For me, they were only mildly interesting looks at life, at best. The final, semi-autobiographical stories were the ones I liked most. Ms Munro is a well-known and revered writer, but perhaps I am just not the right audience. I do admit that short stories don't usually satisfy me as well as lengthier works, so you may enjoy them much more than I did. Although I finished the book, I was somewhat relieved when I was done with it.
    • 4/5
      Excellent stories but so much melancholy!! Just once, I wanted one of these very polite, very suppressed Canadian women (and girls) to scream as loudly as they could and tell everyone to go to hell. Reading these stories made me feel as though I was wearing a straitjacket, which may testify to their brilliance, but makes me never, ever, ever want to read any more Alice Munro. Pardon me while I go burn my bra and march in the streets now.
    • 3/5
      How to "review" short stories by a Nobel Prize winner? I can't. Typical Munro: wives, adulterers, young women, old women, I like the male protagonist story. People living life. Snippets of lives that you might conceive was looking out the window of the car/train/bus/house. Good.
    • 3/5
      For me, it was just ok. Maybe because the short stories didn't grab me immediately and it was hard to get into them in that short of a period, I'm not sure. She did have beautiful details and ideas, and I never doubted the creativity of the work.
    • 4/5
      If you read publishers notes on any collection of Munro's stories, the descriptions sound very much alike. And after reading a handful of collections myself, while enjoying them all, they do resemble one another in tone, feeling, and content. There is a strong sense of time, usually the distant, but not too distant past. While some stories take place in the present, many are grounded in our parents or grandparents' time. And her stories are distinctly Canadian, English speaking rather than Francophone Quebecois, usually set in small towns or the countryside, though Toronto makes an appearance or two. Even now, a visit to Gaspe, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, or another Canadian province will give you a greater sense of these rural settings. And World War II is almost like a character of its own in many of her stories, the backdrop of much of the action, a force that molds and shapes peoples lives in many ways. But Dear God, Dear Life does stand out in one way. It struck me as a bit more depressing than other collections. The overriding theme of these 14 tales is Munro "pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, and action not taken, or a simple twist of fate." So get ready for stories that deal with people running from others and themselves, a drowned child, alzheimer's, fantasies of strangulation, fear of a child being kidnapped, ...and the list goes on and on.
    • 5/5
      I can't really think of much to say about this one except that it is amazing and one of the best examples I've ever come across of a writer who can write about very little happening to ordinary people and still render it beautiful and heartbreaking.
    • 5/5
      Dear Ms Munro,
      We often visited Nana and Grandpa’s in Kincardine while we were growing up in London in the early 70s. They had a rich supply of Readers Digest, crossword puzzle books, and National Geographics. I’d catch up on all that new reading, then retreat to my own books that I’d brought along. I was quite happy to sit on the couch for hours and read, while absorbing the family reunion vibe around me. They would gently tease me every time, “There she is with her nose in a book again.” They humoured me my strange passion, with a sort of loving condescension that was masking just the slightest edge of impatience. That was the beginning of a lifelong defiant anxiety felt when questioned directly about my ‘hobbies’.

      “I like to read.”
      “Oh. ———“
      That’s a conversation stopper in southwestern Ontario, I tell you.
      But when you wrote about that same sort of attitude, brought it out of the shadows and into the light, I almost felt legitimized.

      Every time I read another one of your books, I feel a thrill of recognition, kind of like when you see someone you know on tv. It’s so familiar and yet you can’t believe they’re really on tv. Where everyone can see them.

      Your descriptions and stories of SW Ontario are eerily familiar. My father and several generations back were from the same area in southwestern Ontario as you, and you are only a bit older than my own father. It is as if you have been a distant cousin writing about the same kinds of people I heard about from my own grandparents over many years. It’s not just the stories, it’s that you have captured the times, and the characters. I keep seeing my world, or the world I heard about, reflected in your stories but with that slightly altered, or maybe additional, point of view. And somehow it has helped me see my own families’ lives in a larger context.

      There is a tumble of coincidences I keep bumping into. Back in the 30s or 40s, my grandpa tried and failed at running a mink farm, just like your father. It was just outside of Kincardine, not far from where you lived. I wonder if they shared tips or commiserations. My father escaped by joining the Air Force in the 50s,and his training base was in Clinton, where you live now. He started his own family, and we ended up out West too, in Comox, within two blocks of where you used to live.

      Then life pushed us back to SW Ontario, which seemed an area of pursed lips and hypocrisy. But we always loved visiting “”Kinkerdeen” as children and teenagers. “Don’t get lost now”, our grandparents would lovingly tease every time we stepped out. Every meal, Grandpa (occasionally Nana or even our very elderly Great Aunt Pearl) would say grace: “Lord, bless this food to our use, and bless us to thy service, amen.” My brother and I obediently bowed our heads, but would sneak peeks at each other and barely stifle our giggles at the piousness of the rest of the family. We would mimic perfectly the cadence and drawling words of the prayer. And this was all enjoyed hugely by everyone — no offense given or taken.

      So after all these years of reading and loving your books, Ms Munro, it was that single line in your story “Haven”, of Uncle Jasper saying “Lord bless this food to our use and us to thy service,” that flung me back to those wonderful years visiting my grandparents in Kincardine. They are long dead but you startlingly, somehow, made them alive again.

      This letter is to say thank you, for all of that.
    • 4/5
      Munro is my favorite short story writers. I love her concise style. I'm from southwestern Ontario and I think her writing style accurately captures the personalities of the people there. Her stories typically include some interesting twists. I found I could empathize with many characters in these stories.
    • 4/5
      This is the first time that I have read or listened to anything by Alice Munroe. This is an unabridged collection of her short stories plus for that are autobiography in feeling not in fact. This audiobook did ramble some so I am reflecting that in my review by giving myself permission to ramble some!All are written in the first person, there were some that I loved like the ones about a teacher at a tuberculosis sanitarium and the confused little girl whose older sister drowned. One thing that I really liked was when she expanded on the story by creating another part to it. One of the reasons that I don’t read short stories so much is that sometimes I get really attached to one of the characters and when the story ends there is no more! There is one story about infidelity that was strange to me. Somehow, I ended up not liking the mother so much. It seemed that she was so wrapped up in thinking about her affair that she neglected her children.One of them is a shocker with a man who is passing through and helps a woman. He keeps his promise and stays there for years. I did not expect the ending at all.I like that the author writes the story like she was actually telling stories. Sometimes she veered away from the subject and started on a different road of the story which was good sometimes and annoying other times. In several of the stories, people were very concerned about what others think of them. I am wondering if that was a sign of the times. That makes you wonder if certain thoughts were more prevalent during certain times of history. My most favorite character of the story is one of a woman losing her memory. I can identify with that some. The best thing about her stories is that they open the door for you to think about life.
    • 4/5
      "Corrie" was my favorite out of this collection - very lovely and tragic.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful. Hard to pick favourites, but stand-outs include: 'Train', 'Amundsen', 'Leaving Maverley' and 'In Sight of the Lake'.
    • 2/5
      I would have to say that I'm disappointed. The glorious reviews of this, her latest collection of short stories, were sky high. I had held myself back from the expense of getting this volume when it first came out in hardback. For story after story, I was left liking them, but — while the writing was unquestionably good, and many of the characters were well-crafted and interesting — the plot lines just weren't my cup of tea. Vicky said it first, and her words haunted me as I read the collection, "these seem like old lady stories." She's now 81, but the reviews keep saying her writing is still golden. Many of the stories are set in the past, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they mostly seemed to have an overriding gentle and mannered way to them. Yes, things happen, but I wasn't surprised much and there wasn't much in the shocking or inventive style that I expect in many modern short stories. Personally, I seem to need some good old plot twists, some inventive styling.The last four stories were different. Unusual for her, she included something more autobiographical and I enjoyed them much more. She has spoken of these rarities in recent interviews, “I believe they are the first and last — and the closest — things I have to say about my own life.”I fall back to my old refrain here, "sometimes a great book simply doesn't move the reader if they aren't in the right place for it." So, I will leave this collection thinking "old lady stories." Yet, so many readers love her, I guess I just don't get her. My loss. I move on.
    • 4/5
      Wenn es um das Genre American Shortstories geht, ist Alice Munro eine wahre Meisterin. Die Literaturnobelpreisträgerin versteht es Spannungsbögen gepaart mit stilistischer Raffinesse zu erzeugen. Die Geschichten spielen fast ausnahmslos in den 1950- und 1960-Jahren, viele der Themen sind aber zeitlos. Berührend und informativ zugleich ist der letzte Teil des Buchs, in dem Munro in mehreren Geschichten viel von sich selbst preisgibt. Ich bin eigentlich kein Fan von Shortstories, aber in dem Fall sind sie eine echte Empfehlung.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding
    • 4/5
      Sometimes the truth is in the space between words, and things unsaid reveal more than the question and answers of conversation. Alice Munro’s Dear Life reveals lives, and their secrets, with that same sort of protective silence. Natural conversations, with natural pauses, create the sense of character, time and place. Too little, revealed, keeps the reader searching for more. Then one small slip and the truth will out; the actor slides himself between the lines; the mask falls aside; and what we thought we almost knew is changed... just like in real, dear life.The writing’s spare, convincing, and unemotional, with the tension of genuine need, and the beauty of Canada’s landscapes underneath. Wounded souls have lived through war or privation. Those who’ve kept their emotions reigned in take a step, make a decision, and move on. Betrayal might be ignored, trust broken and restored. Or else the one who cannot stand will find another place. And all these people, the invisible of their land, demand their space, their moment on the page.Sometimes what happens is so small, and its impact so huge, it takes a story to tell it. Alice Munro tells these short stories and lives with masterful precision, voice, and perception, as sure in telling her own past as in revealing the paths of others. Dear Life is a song of life, chance and hope, and a fine collection of intriguing people and stories.Disclosure: We chose it for our book group.
    • 2/5
      I'm going have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with Alice Munro's Dear Life: Stories. While I had originally liked the idea of the connecting theme of older characters looking back at their life growing up and falling in and out of love or sometimes both in rural Canada, it did grow tiresome after awhile.

      I am young but I have been able to read nostalgic fiction without feeling such a boring distance before. With every story, I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that there was yet another story about an old person looking back at their life growing up in Canada.

      However, after the first disasterous and very boring story about an adulterous housewife, Munro's stories did get better. She reached a good stride from Leaving Maverley onward. I believe Munro reached her zenith with Dolly. That story about a wife fretting when her common law husband reconnects with an old love, the eponymous Dolly, was clever, funny, and well-written. It energized me because I was falling asleep.

      I guess I expected more from a Nobel Prize winner. I expected Dear Life: Stories to be epic. What I got was cotton candy: all right but in no way, shape, or form, susitenence. Perhaps this book is one of those times I need to be older to enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      Munro's stories are so comfortable, you feel deeply familiar with the characters even within these short pieces. Yet she often takes an unexpected turn. The most memorable is "Train" in which a soldier returning from war gets off the train before reaching home and the young woman who is waiting for him. Instead, he picks up a life with a lonely woman, takes care of her and their home, and then suddenly... I won't spoil it. Beautiful writing and characterization.
    • 3/5
      I found Dear Life enjoyable, but a bit of a slog. Don’t get me wrong, I admire Alice Munroe and have read most of what she has written. That may actually be the problem here. Dear Life is exactly the same as everything Munroe has written before. Just a slight variation to the theme. You may argue that that’s what life is like and I will readily agree. Yet, I didn’t find it as awe inspiring as her earlier work, or as informative as her fictionalized memoir stories. I have my favourites in her work that stunned me into silence for days, but this is not one of them. There is something exceptional about this collection, though. This is the first time Munro writes about her own life and calls it so.
    • 3/5
      In Dear Life, Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s collection of short fiction and personal reminiscences, the author explores several themes associated with ordinary people who find themselves dealing with sudden changes in their lives. Whether due to the death of a loved one, the dissolution of a relationship, or the onset of a debilitating illness, the stories in this book capture the myriad ways in which her protagonists confront their own life-altering and sometimes cathartic challenges. These are stories that are abundantly detailed and developed with a subtle hand, even if they are not always resolved in a straightforward manner.I had a decidedly mixed reaction to this book, which is the first of Munro’s work that I have read. On one hand, the author demonstrates again and again why she is considered to be such a master of her craft. The prose in each of the stories in this volume is concise and emotionally evocative. She does a truly remarkable job of creating a rich, self-contained world within each tale, many of which span decades of a character’s life in a brief amount of space. On the other hand, though, I also found the subject matter throughout Dear Life to be consistently—relentlessly, in fact—depressing. These are stories of illness, disappointment, and heartbreak, which made them somewhat monotonous to read even if the details changed from one account to the next. Further, the four semi-autobiographical pieces that end the book felt fragmentary and unfinished compared to the rest of the volume. So, while it is easy to appreciate from the quality of the writing how talented Munro really is, the nature of the stories themselves makes it difficult to recommend this book without considerable hesitation.
    • 4/5
      Nice wintertime short stories.
    • 3/5
      I agree that these stories were just so bleak but also that Alice Munro is such a very good writer. Good for a day at home I guess.
    • 3/5
      DEAR LIFE is a collection of short stories that shows the simple lives of ordinary people and the way they handle challenges. As evidenced by her many awards, Alice Munro is a fantastic writer, and I don't know that I have ever read a short story collection that is so even. Although different stories had greater appeal for me on a personal level, the writing style and message is consistent throughout. The three-star rating is a reflection of the effect on me of the overall bleak tone of the collection and my frustration with the nebulous conclusions of many of the stories.
    • 3/5
      I am not a lover of short stories and only read this because it was on our Book Group list. Alice Munro is such a beautiful writer that I couldn't help enjoying the book but how I wish that she had written a novel instead. I am left at the end of every story with a feeling of frustration of wanting to hear More More More of the characters.