Bewilderment in Dear Life

Abstract

This assessment of Alice Munro’s career begins by focusing on the way in which she moves increasingly toward a vision of narrative sequence that undercuts expectations for sequence itself. Turning first to “Amundsen” (from her last collection, Dear Life), the chapter explores her growing tendency towards displacement and indeterminacy, relying ever more on a narrative strategy that can begin anywhere in a finished story and read in either direction. Discussion then turns toward earlier stories, which anticipate her ­distinctive late style in achieving a sense of “chaos” and bewilderment that Munro finds essential. Stories are never “finished” for her (explaining so many revisions and republications), and character is never quite known, remaining a mystery, with plots that rarely sum up or resolve themselves into any clearer understanding.