Dear Life,

Hold on for dear life! She had a dear life. Oh dear. Life. Munro's stories, the last she published before winning the Nobel Prize, are about life and its various dears. There is love and loss and confusion and all the things that make a story worth telling, albeit subtly and with consideration. There is no particular theme to the stories, other than that they are about unremarkable people doing unremarkable things<—>living life<—> when a subtle shift changes the focus of the story entirely. It's almost like a book of bait and switch, except without cruelty. It's a book of Oh!

I always forget how much I like volumes of short stories until I'm actually reading them. I plow through vast, epic novels and enjoy them. Then I encounter books like this, which are entirely unassuming, and slow way, way down. This is a collection to savor. This is a collection to spend time with and relish.