I have never been able to read Alice Munro, and I've always wanted to understand why she is so good. I think listening to this collection on audiobook was the way to go, because I really appreciate her now. Munro's stories might seem a bit mundane and quiet, involving relationships and secret truths rather than action plots. But they are literary gold. She is a very sympathetic author, kind to her characters and readers without breaking from honesty into schmaltz or needless negativity. I think this is what John Gardner would call moral fiction.