Too much happiness

stories

by

English language

Published July 15, 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:
978-0-307-26976-8
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4 stars (10 reviews)

Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers--the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the "deep-holes" in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy's disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky--a late-nineteenth-century Russian emigre and mathematician--on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the …

20 editions

reviewed Too much happiness by Alice Munro

Review of 'Too much happiness' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

From what I remember, Jonathan Frantzen is a fan of Alice Munro. If you don't have enough time to read a novel, read a story by Alice Munro -- that's his advice as I understood it. And that's what I did and enjoyed. A story reads in three hours, ideal for a slow afternoon in the park at the weekend.

There is probably a deep analysis, or even several, to each story. I'm not going to try to analyse the stories here in this review now. What I like, what I admire, is how Munro manages to take me out of the role of reader. The stories touch me.

I read "Dear Life" and "Too Much Happiness" in parallel. Some stories I have read several times: "Train", "Dimensions", "In Sight of the Lake" (inside?).

These books will certainly stay on my shelf and I will pull them out from time …

reviewed Too much happiness by Alice Munro

Review of 'Too much happiness' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

Munro is a master of the difficult art of the short story. In each collection that I have read of hers, a theme runs through the individual snapshots, creating a coherent whole in the book. Too Much Happiness follows this trend, tying love and loss together with the role of women in western (particularly Canadian) society. Each story in this collection is brilliant in its own right, with personal favourites including the dream-like narratives built on strange events becoming acceptable, like Wenlock Edge and Some Women. The title story is strangely the weakest (despite its amazing subject matter, the 19th Century mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky), but only because it doesn't thrive on Munro's brilliant sense of character and use of event as the other stories do.

Free Radicals, my personal favourite about a widow confronted with a murderer in her home, will be remembered for a long time.

reviewed Too much happiness by Alice Munro

Review of 'Too much happiness' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I was unprepared for how moving, brilliantly and sensitively written, and enjoyable this collection would be. I mean, I liked "The Beggar Maid" and all, and that's why I decided to read another book of Munro's, but after this I feel like I should just read it all of her works. The closing story, about the 19th century mathematician expatriate Sophia Kovalevsky, completely overwhelmed my expectations.

reviewed Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Review of 'Too Much Happiness' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Hadde det ikke vært for de to siste novellene, som enten var meningsløs, eller som ikke passet inn tematisk, hadde dette vært en femstjerners opplevelse. Jeg skrev en plass at Alice Munro fikk meg til å skjønne at livet var mer som en tilfeldig episode i en TV-serie enn en film, og dette er nettopp følelsen jeg får av fortellingene i denne boken. Alle med unntak av den litt feilpasserte men merkelig nok tittelgivende siste fortellingen finner sted i Ontario, og som de handler om helt vanlige mennesker hvis helt vanlige begivenheter framstår som grensesprengende og dramatiske - uten at Munro prøver å skape drama. Det er nesten så jeg får lyst til å skrive noveller selv, ettersom jeg skjønner at mine hverdagsopplevelser har et like stort spenningspotensiale som en roman av Robert Ludlum - eller en novelle av Alice Munro.

reviewed Too much happiness by Alice Munro

Review of 'Too much happiness' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

This was an unexpected collection of short-stories. I have not read anything by Alice Munro before reading this, somewhat restrained yet wildly cathartic collection of odd stories.

Ten stories are collected here, all of them surrounding characters who seem to want to belong, who are in different stages of life. The tales are quite contemporary in tone, geographically centered around Canada and the USA, apart from the last story where Stockholm is involved.

One thing about these tales is that they all made me read faster and faster as I went along, to slow down at the beginning of a new one. Munro's styles spun me along. At times, I really wanted to get to the end, but these writings aren't about the end of the stories. They're based on the content. Or one simple thing. Or they provide an oversight.

They're a lot of things.

And I will most …

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