- Les om Alice Munro på Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro
Alice Munro er født i 1931 og omtales ofte som en novellenes mester.
I Norge er det Gyldendal som utgir bøkene hennes.
Fra Store Norske Leksikon (snl.no):
Hennes første novellesamling, Dance of the Happy Shades, kom i 1968. I den neste boken, Lives of Girls and Women (1971, filmatisert 1973), er novellene som kapitler i en roman, en form hun også benyttet i sin mest vellykkede og kjente bok Who Do You Think You Are? (1978, utgitt i andre land som The Beggar Maid; norsk overs. Tiggerpiken, 1982). Munro har også skrevet for fjernsyn.
Alice Munro har vunnet en rekke priser og utmerkelser. Hun har flere ganger blitt tildelt Canadas to mest ettertraktede priser, The Governor General's Award og The Scotiabank Giller Prize, og i 2009 mottok hun The Man Booker International Prize.
Fra Wikipedia:
Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the omniscient narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers of the U.S. rural South. Her female characters, though, are more complex. Much of Munro's work exemplifies the literary genre known as Southern Ontario Gothic.[7]
Munro's work is often compared with the great short story writers. In Munro stories, as in Chekhov's, plot is secondary and "little happens." As with Chekhov, Garan Holcombe notes: "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail." Munro's work deals with "love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov’s obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward."[8]
A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. It is a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event.
Munro's prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary with each undercutting the other in ways that simply, and effortlessly, evoke life.[9] As Robert Thacker notes: "
Munro's writing creates… an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude – not of mimesis, so-called and… 'realism' – but rather the feeling of being itself… of just being a human being."[10]
Many critics have asserted that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels. The question of whether Munro actually writes short-stories or novels has often been asked. Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica, has a simple answer: "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels."
Fra Gyldendals egen omtale:
«Å lese Alice Munros noveller er en påminnelse om hvor oppsiktsvekkende få bøker det egentlig er som virkelig gjør inntrykk på en. Selv om jeg gikk til hennes nye bok med store forventninger, sitter jeg forbløffet tilbake.» Terje Holtet Larsen, Dagbladet
Alice Munro er født i 1931, vokste opp i Wingham i Ontario i Canada, og studerte ved Western Ontario-universitetet. Sammen med sin første mann åpnet hun den berømte bokhandelen Munro's Books i 1963 i byen Victoria. Som en av Canadas aller fremste forfattere har hun mottatt en lang rekke priser og utmerkelser, og fortellingene hennes har vært publisert i The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review m.fl. Bøkene hennes er blitt oversatt til tretten språk. I 1998 ble En god kvinnes kjærlighet valgt til den beste boka av samtlige åtte redaktører i det prestisjetunge bokmagasinet The New York Times Book Review.
Munro fikk Man Booker International Prize i 2009.
Alice Munro og mannen hennes bor delvis i Clinton i Ontario og delvis i Comox i British Columbia, begge steder ligger i Canada.
Utgivelser på Gyldendal
Tiggerpiken. Fortellinger om Flo og Rose Noveller 1982, Vita-serien
Den albanske jomfru og andre fortellinger Noveller 1996
En god kvinnes kjærlighet Noveller 2000
Uvennskap, vennskap, forelskelse, forlovelse, ekteskap Noveller 2004
Rømlingen Noveller 2006
Utsikten fra Castle Rock Noveller 2008
Alice Munros beste Noveller 2009
For mye lykke Noveller 2010
Bare livet Noveller 2013