HATESHIP, FRIENDSHIP, COURTSHIP, LOVESHIP, MARRIAGE

Alice Munro is a wickedly acute observer of human behavior, and she pretty much owns the short story form. In the first of these, in which two adolescent girls play a cruel epistolary trick on Johanna, a spinster housekeeper, it is almost unbearable to look so steadily at their unkindness, knowing that it comes from a probably universal terror that the "promise" of being young and pretty and juicy is in fact no promise at all, that loneliness and dead ends can happen to anybody. Not to Johanna in this case, though; this story is a brilliant and satisfying play on the law of unintended consequences. The rest of the collection, Munro’s ninth, is equally strong and surprising. Kymberly Dakin brings a delicate wisdom to the readings, just what the text deserves and requires, which is the highest possible praise. B.G. [Published: AUG/SEP 02]