Munro's story collections are always a reminder that great writing can be done while returning obsessively to certain themes over and over. Almost all of the stories in this book turn on issues of aging, deterioration, and fidelity. Her depiction of marriage is clear-eyed almost to the point of brutality, but always backs off from cruelty just enough to stay humane. These stories offer little in the way of sentimental comfort ("Comfort" and "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" broke me in two), but have a sort of faint luminosity to them, a cold comfort that illuminates rather than warms. Beautiful and painful stories.