I’ll have a bit Munro of that, please
Self-proclaimed short story month , post number 13. My first brush with Alice Munro came in the way of a short story called “Meneseteung.” Aye, it’s also part of Contemporary Fiction . I had high expectations for it, and, as happened to me with other authors whose stories I greatly anticipated in that book, I wasn’t awestruck. The story is good , no doubt about it. Its craft is exquisite, and the details well chosen. It didn’t make an overly eager reader out of me, though. “Meneseteung” starts off academically, picking up a volume of poetry written by one Almeda Joynt Roth, who lived in western Canada in the nineteenth century (she died in 1903). The narrator combines the book of poetry with snippets from a local newspaper (the Vidette ), which uses a censorious and mocking language to discuss every little thing that happens in town. The town is a bustling economic outpost, crawling with young people and preyed upon by death. Almeda’s parents, brother, and sister all died. Sh...