Books: “Runaway” by Alice Munro

When author Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013, she was asked, "What can be so interesting about small-town Canadian life?" Munro replied, "You just have to be there."

Actually if you grew up in a small town anywhere in North America, you’ll recognize the quiet, sensitive souls that populate her short stories. And if you read the ones in “Runaway,” her 2004 anthology, you’ll find them everywhere you turn .

The female protagonists of these stories—and they are usually female and late middle aged—share a sense of isolation, loneliness, and a desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. Munro gets at this in different ways.

The title story “Runaway” is set in a horse-riding camp, where a beloved goat has run off—a metaphor for the unhappy wife of the proprietor who would love to run away from her bad marriage but can’t. In “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence,” young Juliet falls for an older man whom she meets on a train and whom she eventually marries. They seem to enjoy a happy small-town existence until their grown daughter Penelope inexplicably runs away, never to return.

The best story is “Powers.” Taking place over a period of 60 years, it’s the tale of a woman who possesses psychic powers. She is sought out for psychiatric research in the 1920s until the Great Depression dries up funds and she is forced into a life of circus work and living out of a suitcase.

The stories in “Runaway” exemplify Munro’s superb sense of timing. Her soothing, artless prose innocently strings us along until she delivers the coup de grace at the end.

Fellow author Cynthia Ozick once called Alice Munro “our Chekhov.” After winning everything from the Nobel to the Man Booker, this 91-year-old Canadian may have gotten the best compliment of all.

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