Dear Life by Alice Munro

What a turn-around from a dozen years ago.  My last reading acquaintance with Alice Munro was over her 2001 “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, and Marriage,” a light-hearted book, more anecdotal, comedic memoirs about relationships.  It struck a positive chord with me.  I wrote at the time [Oct 2002], “great stories; I cherished each one as I would a Christmas box of chocolates.”  I was “doing” memoir classes and studies at that time and Munro was the epitome at that time of fictionalized memoir writing.

I fear that the young legs pictured on the cover of this book are not Alice’s, but her grandmother’s.  Alice’s point of view has shifted dramatically over the past dozen years.  Like me, she has shifted into the age-category of “OLD.”  I’m still holding on to where I met her at “young at heart”; she unfortunately has lapsed into slightly confused depression, ready for the OD-packet of painless pills.

I read the first of her dozen-plus stories, “To Reach Japan”, and thought to myself, “Wow, that was horrible.!  I may have read enough.”  But the next day, glutton that I am for punishment, I read “Amundsen”, and thought, now that’s enough, I’ll write it up at this point; I can’t deal with any more. 

And then, the rain having ceased, and having gone to Church for the first time in over a year, and as the Warriors (23-2) won another game, I read, “Leaving Maverley”.

If I could drop the book in molten lead, I would; then dump it in the ocean.  I’m a happy person, who wants to approach the final decades of my life with a smile and a hopeful, positive outlook. 

What a total turn-about from last month’s book club selection of “God’s Hotel”, which was an uplifting, positive story about hope for the world and the individual reader.  Here in “Dear Life,” we have total negativity, pessimism, and regret.  Maybe it’s the time of year, Winter Syndrome, or Christmas Syndrome; darkest days and all that.  Maybe it’s me, maybe tasting some of the same changes that Munro must have experienced the past few years as she turned 80; maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too much of Philip Kerr’s Nazi detective books.  This happened to me once before, decades ago, when I read too many of John D MacDonald’s Travis Mcgee books.  I had to stop – there were depressing me – and I feel the same way about Munro’s “Dear Life.”

I consulted with my muse who said this wasn’t valid commentary.  So I read three more vignettes from the “Finale” section at the end; and then two more from the middle of the book.

Sorry, my immune system just isn’t up to it – too many flu & cold germs going around; too much foreign war and local murders; too many lost elections and apathetic citizenry; too many drones, and too much spying.

In the religious spirit of this season, I wouldn’t recommend this book, Alice Munro’s “Dear Life” to my worst enemy.