- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart; First Edition edition (Sep 24 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0771066996
- ISBN-13: 978-0771066993
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.5 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 544 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,276,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Open Secrets may be Alice Munro's strangest book. These original, eccentric stories skirt their own secrets, resolving their plots but leaving everything else open. The stories are all connected (often very tenuously) to Carstairs, Ontario, a tiny, fictitious town hidden somewhere north of Georgian Bay, but they also ramble as far afield as rural Albania, wartime France, and Australia.
The title story concerns the disappearance of a young girl from a Canadian Girls in Training camping trip. While the characters speculate whether the incident was a simple drowning, an assignation with a secret lover, or a murder, Munro sits, enigmatically, on the outside of resolution:
Heather Bell will not be found. No body, no trace. She has blown away like ashes. Her displayed photograph will fade in public places. Its tight-lipped smile, bitten in at one corner as if suppressing a disrespectful laugh, will seem to be connected with her disappearance rather than her mockery of the school photographer. There will always be a tiny suggestion, in that, of her free will.Elsewhere, Munro takes conventional beginnings and turns them into extraordinary, expansive tales. The opening story, "Carried Away," features the Carstairs librarian, who falls in love with a soldier who begins writing to her from the trenches of the First World War, even though they have never formally met. When he comes home, however, he does not introduce himself to her, but marries his old fiancé. Most writers would be content to leave the story there, but for Munro this is merely an introduction. As she does in so many of her stories of mundane but utterly extraordinary women, she takes this piece in surprising and refreshing directions. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Loosely connected short stories mine both the history of a small Canadian town and the complex personal histories of Munro's protagonists.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
I've read this at least three times.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Open Secrets: Stories (Paperback)
It astounds me that some people find Munro's prose boring; hypnotic is the word I'd use. These stories aren't talk shows or soap operas or "Oprah stories" with heartwarming messages at the end. What they're about, in my view, is the strange and slippery role that time and memory play in our lives, and in that sense they join the tradition of Proust and Wordsworth. Munro is fascinated by experiences of disorientation or dislocation in which one no longer knows quite who one is, and by our stubborn attempts to make those moments fit into the narratives of our lives. But she also knows that those are the experiences that allow us to change, to get somewhere: the moments when we risk all because we have nothing to lose. Her small towns are about as folksy and harmless as Twin Peaks, because gaps keep opening in the dull fabric of their inhabitants' existence. Read beneath the surface, don't be fooled by the prosy, matter-of-fact tone, and you'll find that these are some weird and compelling stories indeed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Found treasure,
By A Customer
This review is from: Open Secrets: Stories (Paperback)
I don't recognize Munro's work in the reviews (editorial and customer) I've read here. Are these stories about women? Are they heavy and soporific? Not in my view. For the most part, I see loving, humorous looks at a piece of geography and its inhabitants, stories which are beautifully written, tightly woven, relaxed, and full of delicious discoveries about people and places. Lots of short stories end with a bang and then they are... over. Not Munro's. Hers never glib, never lazy. They are daring, warming, readable and re-rereadable.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Open secrets is food for the soul!.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Open Secrets: Stories (Paperback)
In "Open Secrets", Munroe tends to delve deep beneath the surface of women's lives. The stories contain intimate descriptions of feelings that many women try to hide, or even deny. The stories are classified as being "short", however the emotions that are brought forth through these words tell a tale that may soothe the soul for a lifetime. In "A Real Life", Dorrie is depicted as a sort of wild woman who shoots rabbits for food and fur, yet still remains dignified; in "Open Secrets", Maureen is a woman who marries her much older husband because she truly loves him, despite his stroke, but does he love her; finally, in "The Albanian Virgin", Charlotte and her strange husband Gjurdhi are presented, both live eccentric lives and leave a distinct impression on those that they meet. "Open Secrets" is a book made for women who want to explore their souls, and are not afraid to find what lies within. Once again, Alice Munroe has truly captured what is is to be "woman"!
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