This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on May 31, 2015.
Dear Life: Stories is, as one reviewer posited, a bad place to start reading such an acclaimed author. This may very well be true. Either way, I have no intention of continuing to read any of Munro’s work after reading what amounts to an extremely over sold and boring set of stories.
I honestly have no idea where Munro earned her reputation from, earning the Nobel prize and all. Then again, Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow earned the Pulitzer and I’m stuck a third of the way through that. So, yes, I can see the award winning, I just can’t understand it.
Since I’m being sacrilegious by calling Munro a boring writer, and her stories not worth reading, I might as well go all the way and state her autobiographical stories, about her childhood, are even worse.
In my own childhood, my father would often say to me (much to my chagrin at the time, much to my relief as an adult) “What’s your point?”
I wish someone had asked Munro what is the point of her stories, especially those about her life. They meander. They go nowhere. Pointless wonderings. More like journal entries than something worth reading for anyone other than the author.
Really, Munro’s stories go nowhere. Or, if they do go somewhere, there is no point. Or, you don’t care. Or, well, who cares? No one, and that’s because the characters don’t resonate.
One last point: I’m going to get super sacrilegious here. The claim is often made that male authors sound wrong or otherwise inauthentic, when writing from a female perspective. Well, Munro sounds inauthentic when she writes for some of her male narrators/characters.
Dear Life: Stories is not worth reading.
On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1287736850