For the best part of a decade now, many of Alice Munro’s ingeniously crafted stories have revolved around an aging spouse who is dying and a younger woman who has been drafted into the family to look after that person. The ensuing rivalry — both sexual and something deeper, more jarring, since it involves a kind of tussle for life itself — is what animates these tales, and the results are engrossing.

A second scenario that recurs persistently, going right back to the beginning of Munro’s career, is that of the bright young woman from a provincial and limiting, though possibly eccentric, family, who breaks away in pursuit of sexual adventure and must inevitably pay some kind of intangible price, even as she thrives.

For Munro, these two scenarios are like interlinking spheres of narrative potential, and it is astounding to see how much she makes of them. It is difficult, I find, to go from reading Munro’s work to reading almost any other contemporary fiction (I tend to stick to non-fiction for a while). By comparison, other authors’ voices seem naive, histrionic or absurdly style- conscious.

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