Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro
2009, Random House Audio
10 unabridged cds/ total listening 11.5 hours
read by Kimberly Farr and Arthur Morey
303 pages
I’ve never been one for short stories, but even though these stories
are depressing and dark, they are mesmerizing and I seem to be hooked on
them. The reader (since I’m listening to
the audio edition) might add to that- she reads really smoothly. Haven't listened to any with the male reader yet. The following synopses probably contain spoilers. I want to remember the stories myself, so I've chosen to include them.
1-“Dimensions” Dori,
still in her teens, married an orderly that took care of her dying mother. He was much older, and quite
controlling. They had three kids in
rapid succession, but he was crazy. One evening he became upset with her…..and
killed the children. The story takes
place two years later, and follows Dori as she goes to visit Lloyd in prison,
something she can’t stop herself from doing. When he tells her that he sees the
children in heaven – and happy – it looks like her life will add a tiny hue of
grayness to the black that it has become. Or at least that’s the take I get on
it.
2-“Fiction” Joyce and her carpenter husband, John, separate
after many married years when he falls for his much-younger apprentice. Years later, Joyce meets up with the
interloper’s daughter who had also been one of her music students. She has become an author, writing a short
story about their relationship as teacher and student – which bring up the
question –does everyone remember the
past in the same way?
3 – “Wenlock Edge” Told in the first person, a girl leaves
home to go to college, where she has a roommate named Nina. Nina has an arrangement with elderly Mr.
Purvis. When the narrator, at Nina’s urging,
goes for dinner with him one night, she discovers she is to be completely
naked. She complies. There is nothing
sexual that happens, but when she returns to her apartment she discovers Nina
has disappeared. She has gone to live
with Ernie Botts, a character that the narrator had gone to dinner with a few
times at the beginning of the story….
4- “Deep-Holes” Sally and Alex raise three children, but the
focus of this story is the eldest, whose life changes after he falls into a
chasm and breaks both legs. He is nine
at the time. Extremely intelligent, but
never receiving any positives from his father, he drops out of college, and
then disappears completely. Years later
a brief meeting with his mother leaves her unsettled. It left me unsettled – in a good, thoughtful
way.
