Just read my first Alice Munro story. Very impressed. The wonders of a quietly shifting focus, not following the story but somehow miraculously driving it, on and on, laying out a web of meaning and consequence while you are following it, with the main movement happening like behind a veil of more static but very telling and carefully arranged scenery. Sheer magic. Reminded me of Stewart O’Nans wonderful novel “A World Away”, not only in time and setting but also in its slow tempo and skillfully crafted layers – only much more condensed.
Munro surely is a writer’s writer, like Jonathan Franzen implied.
