Another day of eating and drinking and making merry - well, from 4.00 pm onwards at least. I did manage to get some work done before that and to read a particularly good story in Alice Munro's collection Runaway, this being the penultimate tale, neatly entitled Tricks. At one point, when the protagonist Robin is devastatingly cold-shouldered by the man she has fallen desperately in love with on their single meeting, it seemed to be simply, though powerfully, a sad narrative of lost opportunity, but the resolution took it to quite another level.
The whole book is obviously excellent, yet I've had quite a difficult time getting through the stories and Tricks was the first one I really 'got' first time, being held from start to finish. The problem is that Munro creates fresh, dense worlds in each story such that each one presents a challenge akin to starting a new novel. At a time when demands are being made on me both in terms of work and community I'm finding it difficult to be a good enough reader and rise to the demands being made on the fictional front. In this case that's especially ironic since I've no doubt whatsoever that the demands are all too reasonable given the rewards in store.
I'm just off to see if I can do justice to the final story in the collection before drifting into dreamland. I've a feeling it's going to be a close-run thing.
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