Alice Munro: A Double Life

Sarah Robertson is an editor in the College Division of Nelson Canada.

The focus of this slender biography is on the “lifelong split [in
Alice Munro] between ordinary life and the life of the imagination.”
Munro sought fulfilment in both arenas, but discovered them at times to
be hopelessly at odds. In her childhood and early married years, she hid
her writing from the outside world, “pretending to be what people
wanted [her] to be.” Critical success was to bring release from the
role-playing, although the theme of double lives has been a continuing
preoccupation in Munro’s increasingly complex and richly textured
fictional universe.

This capable and straightforward overview of Munro’s life and fiction
should prove a valuable resource for the high-school market. The general
reader can only hope that a definitive biography—one that matches in
spirit and scope this subject’s formidable accomplishments—may be
forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.