Cover of Selected Stories

Selected Stories

Spanning almost thirty years and settings that range from big cities to small towns and farmsteads of rural Canada, this magnificent collection brings together twenty-eight stories by a writer of unparalleled wit, generosity, and emotional power. In her Selected Stories, Alice Munro makes lives that seem small unfold until they are revealed to be as spacious as prairies and locates the moments of love and betrayal, desire and forgiveness, that change those lives forever. To read these stories—about a traveling salesman and his children on an impromptu journey; an abandoned woman choosing between seduction and solitude—is to succumb to the spell of a writer who enchants her readers utterly even as she restores them to their truest selves.

Read more

Walker brothers cowboy —

Dance of the happy shades —

Postcard —

Images —

Something I've been meaning to tell you —

The Ottawa Valley —

Material —

Royal beatings —

Wild swans —

The beggar maid —

Simon's luck —

Chaddeleys and Flemings —

Dulse —

The turkey season —

Labor Day dinner —

The moons of Jupiter —

The progress of love —

Lichen —

Miles City, Montana —

White dump —

Fits —

Friend of my youth —

Meneseteung —

Differently —

Carried away —

The Albanian virgin —

A wilderness station —

Vandals.

Audience
adult
Length
epic · 688 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Selected Stories? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Selected Stories. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Stories in an Almost Classical Mode Shares short stories, fiction, literature
  2. Vanishing and Other Stories Shares short stories, fiction, canadian
  3. The Collected Stories Shares short stories, fiction, literature
  4. Stone Mattress: Nine Tales Shares short stories, fiction, canadian

“People who read Selected Stories tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Collected Stories
  2. The Stories
  3. The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
  4. Escapes

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction about women), start with these.”

  1. Wilderness Tips
  2. Varieties of Exile
  3. We So Seldom Look on Love
  4. Moral Disorder and Other Stories

“If it was the short stories that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Collected Stories
  2. Bark: Stories
  3. Flings: Stories
  4. Birds of America

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. A New Day Rising
  2. 'Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving
  3. Broken Things
  4. The Latter Days: A Memoir