This book is shockingly good. Mostly women, but single, married, with children, without, and with every kind of disposition — it's like she's lived inside each one and can tell you the feelings that skim along the top of a person, but then the yearning, the desire, the hatred, the deep love that swims underneath. Often, when I read a prize-winning author, I have to steel myself for a disappointment, but I won't read Alice Munro with that fear again.