The award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the Canadian writer Alice Munro in 2013 confirmed her position as a master of the short story form. This book explores Munro's work from a full range of critical perspectives, focussing on three of her most popular and important published collections: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), Runaway (2004), and her final collection Dear Life (2012). With chapters written by the world's leading critics of Munro's work, the short story form and contemporary Canadian writing, this book explores such themes as love and marriage, sex, fate, gender and humor in her writings as well as her approaches to narrative form and autobiography. In these three late collections Munro sharply articulates, again and again, the mysteries of being itself.

Robert Thacker is Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University, New York, USA. His many previous publications include Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives - A Biography (2005, revised 2011).

1. Introduction: A Dear Life in Fact: The Art of Alice Munro (Robert Thacker, St. Lawrence University, USA)
Part I: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)
2. “The Key to Treasure”: Sex and Storytelling in Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Charles E. May, California State University Long Beach, USA)
3. Conflict and Teaching in 'Comfort' (Tracy Ware, Queen's University, Canada)
4. “What's Your Wife's Name? I Forget”: Marriage and Mistaken Identity in 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' (Robert McGill, University of Toronto, Canada)
Part II: Runaway (2004)
5. Sibyl At the Kitchen Table, or Translating the Classics in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and Runaway (Julie Rivkin, Connecticut College, USA)
6. The Lives of Men and Women: Narrative Limits and Trajectories in Alice Munro's Runaway (Eric Reeves, Smith College, USA)
7. Eros and Writing in Alice Munro's 'Juliet' Trilogy (Timothy McIntyre, Queen's University, Canada)
Part III: Dear Life (2012)
8. The Arranging of Stories in Alice Munro: Starting to Read Dear Life (J.R. Struthers, University of Guelph, Canada)
9. “Rage and Admiration”: Grotesque Humor in Dear Life (Ailsa Cox, Edge Hill University, UK)
10. “Close, Closer, Closest”: Autobiographical Disclosures in the 'Finale' Stories of Dear Life (Linda M. Morra, Bishop's University, Canada)
Index