Friend of My Youth: Stories
Alice Munro
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0679729577
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013
The ten miraculously accomplished stories in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.
"[Friend of My Youth is] a wonderful collection of stories, beautifully written and deeply felt."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
moon was not going to be out—that was the other thing his tone made clear. He poured out more whisky, and it wasn’t in aid of a seduction. All the faith and energy, the adeptness, the forgetfulness that is necessary to manage even a tiny affair—Hazel knew, for she’d had two tiny affairs, one at college and one at a teachers’ conference—all that was beyond them at present. They would let the attraction wash over them and ebb away. Antoinette would have been willing, Hazel was sure of that.
she hadn’t taken the baby to the hospital. “You tell me why,” said Karin, and they started to fight. “You said he didn’t need to go,” said Karin. “O.K., so he doesn’t need to go.” Brent called the taxi company, and the taxis weren’t going out because of the storm, which up to then neither he nor Karin had noticed. He called the hospital and asked them what to do, and they said to get the fever down by wrapping the baby in wet towels. So they did that, and by midnight the storm had quieted down
course I went along with her, because I couldn’t be sure what she meant to do, and she sang a hymn. That was all. I guess it was her contribution to the service. She sang so you could hardly hear her, but the hymn was one I knew. I can’t recall it, but I knew it perfectly well.” “Goodness and Mercy all my Life,” Averill sang then, lightly but surely, so that Jeanine squeezed her around the waist and exclaimed, “Well, Champagne Sally!” The captain showed a moment’s surprise. Then he said, “I
face was to paint her eyebrows blue—to pluck out all the hairs of her eyebrows, in fact, and paint the skin blue. Not an arched line—just a little daub of blue over each eye, like a swollen vein. Georgia, whose dark hair was teased, whose eyes were painted in the style of the time, whose breasts were stylishly proferred, found all this disconcerting, and wonderful. Harvey was the other person there whose looks Georgia found impressive. He was a short man with heavy shoulders, a slight potbelly,
involves her in a long chilly kiss. He fastens onto her with an appetite that is grievous but unconvincing. A parody of passion, whose intention neither one of them, surely, will try to figure out. She doesn’t think about that as she walks back to town through the yellow-leafed streets with their autumn smells and silences. Past Clover Point, the cliffs crowned with broombushes, the mountains across the water. The mountains of the Olympic Peninsula, assembled like a blatant backdrop, a cutout of