Laura's Reviews > Dear Life

I wanted to like Alice Munro's stories. She looks like such a nice lady on the back cover of the book, but I just didn't. I gave up after 3 and 1/2 stories. Her writing wasn't compelling or particularly interesting to me. What I really disliked, though, were the actual story lines and the characters. The characters felt vapid, and often they behaved in very immoral ways. I'm not a prude or a moralist, but I just don't care about reading about characters who have no depth and who have no qualms about behaving in ways that may deeply hurt other people. I have no problem with reading stories about martial infidelity if the writing is good (e.g. Anna Karenina, the queen of poor decision-making, but such great writing and character depth and complexity), but I have absolutely no patience for characters (or people) who treat marital infidelity lightly or flippantly as if it's just accepted and normal. If that's how it is in northern Ontario, then pray I never find myself there. I just didn't find any depth or interest in these stories. They fell flat for me.