Victoria Reads Books
Global citizen, adventurer, ponderer. Lover of coffee, books, and the Oxford comma. Infected by wanderlust, enchanted by stories. Might occasionally be a photo blog.
Currently reading
Review: How I Met My Husband, by Alice Munro
"I didn't figure out till years later the extent of what I had been saved from."
Alice Munro book sales have been understandably surging following her Nobel Prize win. Previously, I've only had exposure to one of her works, titled Girls and Boys, which I personally wasn't a huge fan of.
There were a lot of similarities between Girls and Boys and How I Met My Husband. Both have naive female main characters, and both explore their everyday lives. However, How I Met My Husband deals with a young girl's first exposures to romance. Munro skilfully focuses the story (with the help of the title), only to unexpectedly shift it at the end. For me, Munro's skill is not in her ability to make the reader connect to the characters, or to feel the connections between the characters. Indeed, I didn't particularly like Edie, the main character of How I Met My Husband, and I couldn't feel a romantic connection between she and Chris, or
(show spoiler)However, it's in her ability to, with wide brushstrokes, capture a feeling that can't be pinpointed or identified, but can be gently gathered and observed, that displays her true talent.
1
