Love life
Love life. 14 Stories (Originally Dear Life. Stories , 2012) is Alice Munro's fourteenth collection of short stories . In these latest works by the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature 2013 , stories are told, among other things, about ways of dealing with what at first appears strange, as well as about being forgiving - including oneself.
For the first time there is a further grouping of works in a Munro collection. It consists of four stories and is called Finale . Half of the stories in the volume are between 13 and 20 pages in the original language, the other half between 23 and 40 pages. At 13 pages, “Voices” is the shortest, “ Zug ” at 40 pages the most extensive work in the collection. In an interview in November 2012, Alice Munro commented on the works “ Amundsen ”, “Farewell to Maverly”, “Heimstatt” and “ Zug ”.
A German version of the volume was published in 2013 by S. Fischer in Frankfurt am Main, translated by Heidi Zerning. A selection in the translation by Reinhild Böhnke was published in advance in 2013 as an audio book Liebes Leben by Parlando in Berlin, read by Christian Brückner and Sophie Rois .
effect
For Natalie Crom, the stories in this volume are among the most beautiful that Munro has written. She was impressed by the way Munro describes characters very precisely on the one hand and strangely imprecise on the other hand, or describes a course of events. You notice that a lot happens psychologically, but nothing is explained. It is only described what people do, what gestures they make or what they say. All of this is constructed very subtly. Alexandre Astier adds that there are no moral judgments at Munro, but that people do what they do.
In addition to reviews that were mostly praising, there is also a contribution to this volume that can be viewed as a criticism. In June 2013 Christian Lorentzen took the appearance of Dear Life for the London Review of Books as an opportunity to express his fundamental skepticism about Munro's work and, above all, its reception, which he finds too uncritical. At the end of his review he comes to the volume Dear Life . There are several more stories in it about being abandoned (in men), one story about dementia from the perspective of a person with dementia, and two stories about asexual men fleeing intimacy. Lorentzen believes that the sketches of the coda ( finale ) are explicitly presented as autobiographical and contain recognizable things from the earlier books: the house at the end of the street, being beaten, prudish in village life and an appendectomy that also found a growth. Sex and cancer are two taboos that no longer exist, and there is probably not enough written about them. The time was longed for when there was greater innocence and more shame, and this apparently explains a lot about Munro's popularity, so Lorentzen's conclusion. Lorentzen emphasizes the story “Reaching Japan”. Christian Lorentzen writes that after so many stories there is a "sad woman becomes happier" scheme, it was inevitable, and after "years later" makes three points that end his review.
Works included
- Japan reach (To Reach Japan), p. 7
- Amundsen (Amundsen Web ), p. 39.
- Farewell to Maverly (Leaving Maverly), p. 81.
- Commenting on the plot of this story, Alice Munro says, “In Leaving Maverly there are a lot of people who are after love or sex or something. It seems to me that the invalid and her husband benefit from it, while the others around her miss the boat for various reasons. I really admire the young woman who has set out, and I hope that she and the man whose wife is dead will somehow get together. "
- Kies (Gravel) on the web, same version , p. 109.
- Heimstatt (Haven), p. 131.
- Commenting on the plot of this story, Alice Munro says, “ There is a very obvious“ ideal wife ”in Haven , almost a caricature, like the way women's magazines suggested it when I was young. In the end, she doesn't really care - God knows what will become of it. "
- Pride, p. 157.
- After a while two people find a happy arrangement together.
- Corrie (Corrie on the web ), p. 181.
- Zug (Train Web, previous version ), p. 205.
- With Seeblick (In Sight of the Lake), p. 253.
- Nancy is a senior citizen and feels that something is wrong with her nerves, which is why she makes an appointment with a doctor in another city. Without her husband, who pursues his own interests, sets out there and, in search of the practice, realizes that she does not find her way around very well. A nice older man, whom she meets in his beautiful garden in front of a beautiful house, offers her help by accompanying her to her car and pointing the way to the residence with a view of the lake, where he suspects the doctor's office he is looking for. As she drives off, Dolly thinks she gets a different impression of her helper in the rearview mirror when he turns to some alternative young people in a familiar way, whom he had previously considered carelessly in passing. In the last section, Sandy, who wears a name tag, formulates that the action probably took place in Nancy's dream. The impression arises that Nancy lives in a home and is now widowed.
- Dolly (Dolly), p. 271.
- The sudden fear of being abandoned by your loved one is not necessarily spared, even if you are over 70.
- The Eye (The Eye), S. 299th
- Night , p. 315.
- Voices (Voices), S. 331st
- Dear life (Dear Life Web, previous version )
Reviews
Chronologically ascending
- Catherine Taylor: Dear Life by Alice Munro: review. on: telegraph.co.uk , November 15, 2012.
- Charles McGrath: The Sense of an Ending. on: nytimes.com , November 16, 2012
- Ruth Scurr : Dear Life by Alice Munro: review. on: telegraph.co.uk , November 21, 2012
- Louise Doughty: Dear Life by Alice Munro - review. on: theguardian.com , November 25, 2012.
- Gordon House: Alice Munro stays on track with her winning short stories in her new collection, 'Dear Life'. on: kansas.com , February 17, 2013
- Christian Lorentzen: Poor Rose. In: London Review of Books . Vol. 35 no. 11 · 6 June 2013, pp. 11-12. (A big hit, only the last part relates to this volume.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Alice Munro: On Dear Life . To Interview with Alice Munro , newyorker.com , November 20, 2012.
- ↑ Alexandre Astier, Nathalie Crom ( Télérama ) and Laurent Nunez ( Marianne ), Littérature: Rien que la vie et Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier , franceculture.fr , October 3, 2014, in French, debate on the 2014 novel by Patrick Modiano , Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier and Liebes Leben , published simultaneously in French on October 2, 2014.
- ^ Christian Lorentzen: Poor Rose. Against Alice Munro. Review of Dear Life by Alice Munro. In: London Review of Books. Vol. 35 no. 11 · 6 June 2013, pp. 11-12. There is one comment for this review: Robert Barrett, Too much? It says: “I just ate ten two-pound boxes of See's chocolates. I feel terrible. The chocolates must be bad. "
- ↑ Table of Contents