Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I return to this page, and see, a surprise to me, that I rated it three stars in 2011. I actually don’t remember reading it before. It was not on my shelf, so I bought a new copy recently, as I am making my way through Alice Munro’s books, mostly in order, and mostly focusing on the ones that I thought I hadn’t read. I had previously read the 1982 collection, Progress of Love, and nearing the end of Friend of My Youth, I was about to say that I really didn’t enjoy it as much. And then there’s the stunning last story ‘Wigtime’ and while it’s not enough to completely save the collection for me, it is enough for me to raise the rating to four stars!
It’s an interesting experience reading Munro again and reading her stories from an older vantage point. I’m sure that I would have missed much in earlier readings, particularly when I was in my university years. I also find it interesting whether I can cross the barrier of a different time and place to really engage with the stories. I usually can, and am surprised by it, to go back in time to these small towns in Ontario, the poverty of country life, and be engrossed, for example in ‘The Turkey Season’ from The Moons of Jupiter. But sometimes, I can’t.
After enjoying the first two stories, ‘Friend of my Youth’ and ‘Five Points’, I was disengaged from ‘Meneseteung’ with a researcher looking at the life of a poetess in the late 1800s. The effects of the Second World War combined with Scottish recitations in the next story also confused me, but also made me realise that Munro sometimes uses snippets of verse (I assume made up) or a complicated piece of information at a pivotal point of the story (usually the conclusion) and it doesn’t work for me. As I said, I quite liked the first story, but to end it with a full paragraph on a 17th century Scottish religious sect, the Cameronians, goes over my head, as does the conclusion to ‘Oh, What Avails’ when a stanza of poetry is recalled from the Anthology of English Verse that explains a character’s name.
But compare that to the book’s close, and also Wigtime’s close:
Margot and Anita have got this far. They are not ready yet to stop talking. They are fairly happy.
This, after a complex comparison of two old friends, their different pathways, jumping back and forth over more than three decades. I loved the story and I loved the ending.
I take it as a given that most people reading this will also be fans of Munro, as I am, and so this review isn’t a critique but more me working out why I like some of her stories and books more than others. As an aside, has anyone else noticed how often Munro describes women characters by their weight, whether they are solid or slender, broad-hipped or waif-like? I can’t unsee it now that I’ve started to notice it, and it feels a little too judgemental for my liking.