Since I moved to Amherst, my New Yorkers haven’t been arriving until Thursday. So tonight I was scanning though the table of contents, feeling a bit let down by the Twenty Under Forty; there’s that Ryan Lizza piece on why we’re screwed the Democrats couldn’t get climate legislation through, and OMG NEW ALICE MUNRO (subscription only).
So, so good. I’d been a little disappointed with her last few in TNY—the serial killer in the kitchen—but “Corrie” is fantastic, sentence by sentence and as a whole, leaner than Munro’s 1990s-early 2000s chronologies, and so refreshing after ______ and _______, no dutiful scene furniture or academic sentences eddying away momentum. The authorial hand is so in sync with the consciousness Munro generates for her characters that her doling out of information—the way she manipulates us—feels natural and appropriate, and gives dignity to Corrie’s story. One of my favorite stories of the year.
photo: Mimi Haddon
