Alice Munro Influence

Alice Munro, a non-traditional Nobel Laureate, is known for the exquisite life and connection she brings to her 30 page short stories, all based on her own personal experiences and history. Munro’s familial and personal history is familiar to the readers and fans of her stories because she uses her relatable experiences to create her characters. Each of her short stories are a part of larger collection, including novels Dear Life and Runaway. Her works bring a sense of intimacy, allowing the reader to relate and feel each word on the page. Her work has been described as revolutionary, making short stories so much more appreciated in the world of literature. Alice Munro’s relatable upbringing was the main influence in her writings and it
This book, a large collection of intertwining short stories, expresses such a powerful emotion of fear yet determination. The book is able to tell a powerful story in a 30 page short story, all relating to her own life. “Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can,” (-write about how that, again referring to why she won, sets her aside from the other nobel laureates), says Julian Barnes, a renowned English author, “You are not aware that time is passing, only that it has passed—in this, the reader resembles the characters, who also find that time has passed and that their lives have been changed, without their quite understanding how, when, and why.”(“Writers on Munro”) However, critic Christian Lorentzen has a different perspective of her books. “There’s something confusing about the consensus around Alice Munro. It has to do with the way her critics begin by asserting her goodness, her greatness, her majorness or her bestness, and then quickly adopt a defensive tone, instructing us in ways of seeing as virtues the many things about her writing that might be considered shortcomings,” Lorentzen says. He doesn’t understand how an author who rewrites the same kind of stories with the same kind of characters over and over again make her an “astonishing” author or a woman of many talents. He doesn’t see what most of Munro’s fans see. Her stories are all shaped around her own life. They repeat themselves just like the events of her life intertwine. Many critics think the same way as Lorentzen, whereas others think her stories make some average Canadian’s personal experience so much more realistic and relatable. Runaway, Munro’s most well-known book, emphasizes the intimate connection between the characters and the