Alice Munro

Too Much Happiness

Alice Munro

2009

These are beguiling, provocative stories about manipulative men and the women who outwit them. ‘Brimming with intensely believable characters and rich social detail’ Sunday Times A wife and mother whose spirit has been crushed finds release from her extraordinary pain in the most unlikely of places. The young victim of a humiliating seduction finds an unusual way to get her own back and move on. An older woman, dying of cancer, weaves a poisonous story to save her life. Alice Munro takes on complex, even harrowing emotions and events and renders them into stories that surprise, amaze, and shed light on the unpredictable ways we accommodate to what happens in our lives. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

Alice Munro

1998

旅仕事の父に伴われてやってきた少年と、ある町の少女との特別な絆。30年後に再会した二人が背負う、人生の苦さと思い出の甘やかさ(「イラクサ」)。孤独な未婚の家政婦が少女たちの偽のラブレターにひっかかるが、それが思わぬ顛末となる「恋占い」。そのほか、足かせとなる出自と縁を切ろうともがく少女、たった一度の息をのむような不倫の体験を宝のように抱えて生きる女性など、さまざまな人生を、長い年月を見通す卓抜したまなざしで捉えた九つの物語。長篇小説のようなずっしりした読後感を残す大人のための短篇集。