Super easy to read, the stories are well written but to be honest not that interesting.
While they talk about ordinary people with ordinary lives like all of us, it lacked something, I hardly found a character that I could relate to.
I honestly don't understand why she won the Nobel Prize.

Most of these stories seemed to be about the same thing: controlling men, frustrated women and a narrative that felt tedious. I guess I am not a fan.

I read my first Alice Munro short story last year in a bookstore in London. I picked up her latest collection, thought I'd read the first page and finished the entire story standing, rapt. So when I saw "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" in a used bookstore in Northampton, I bought it without a second thought and read it in a week, which for me is really fast.

The amazing thing about Ms. Munro's stories is how simultaneously easy they are to read and how deep and thoughtful. She introduces characters with Dickensian genius - sometimes their physical attributes, but most often, their precise and conflicted internal geographies. Take the first line from the first story in HFCLM (also the title story):

"Years ago, before the trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines, a woman with a high, freckled forehead and a frizz of reddish hair came into the railway station and inquired about shipping furniture."

The setting of HFCLM ranges from Ontario to the British Columbia coast in Canada, and with vivid detail. Though the stories are set in the past, the human conditions that she is so good at describing are not. From adolescent angst to teenage cruelties to adult treacheries to the end games of the elderly - she doesn't sound a false note once.

Here are some lovely excerpts, although Ms. Munro's real talent is in how she creates whole worlds out of nothing and everything:

"Young husbands were stern, in those days. Just a short time before, they had been suitors, almost figures of fun, knock-kneed and desperate in their sexual agonies. Now, bedded down, they turned resolute and disapproving." - What Is Remembered (and one of my favourite stories in the book)

"Now was the time, when we were drenched and safe and confronted with radiance." - Nettles (another amazing story)

She saw the van detach itself from its place on the curb and make its way down the street. It was a light-blue, shimmery, sickening color." - "Floating Bridge"

"There on the sidewalk in the world's view. Kissing like mad." - What Is Remembered

My only peeves with HFCLM is Ms. Munro's monoracial/monocultural bent (white Canadians everywhere), and the fact that she has terrible titles for her stories - not just unimaginative and workhorsey, but sometimes not even apt. But don't let that stop you from reading this book. It's more than worthy.

I don't usually read short stories, but these (Munro's) are really good.

I think Alice Munro is just brilliant. She has an amazing way of capturing the flawed humanity of her characters so perfectly. Everyone is kind of lost or making questionable decisions, but you never really hate anyone. I think my favorite story in this collection was "Nettles" which gets so many things right - the perfect depiction of childhood games and experiences, the weird intimacy of reuniting with a childhood friend, the restlessness of adulthood. I don't know how to describe it - she just nailed all of it in that story. It really stuck with me. Anyway, this is a great collection.

Sheer poetry of the human experience.

4.5 stars. Really well written collection of short stories.

A practically perfect collection of short stories by the author considered the master at writing them. If I could pick a favorite I would, but I can’t, and that’s maybe the best indicator at how terrific they are

4.5*