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Waterloo Chronicle (Waterloo, On1868), 16 Nov 1994, p. 23

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The secrets lurk â€" in the spaces â€" open secrets. Someone knows, but no one says. The cover comments on this collection say a good deal about these stories being like novels, | wondered why. Why try to pretend these are novels when they are something just as valuable but different? I finally decided that there was some truth in comparing these stories to novels. The stories cover many years, even generaâ€" tions, lengths of time unusual in short fiction. They work the way my memory works â€" selecâ€" tively, highlighting important events and writer, once said, "A short story writer must assume an alert reader. Otherwise, there could be no story." _ With a book of Alice Munro stories â€" like her recent collection, Open Secrefs â€" it is easy to be alert. | am always caught by her lanâ€" guage, by her power of observation: "His hair was white but thick and wavy, the sort of springy hair that goes in ripples, up and back from the forehead, his skin was flushed and his face was deeply wrinkled from the efforts of speechmaking â€" and from talking to people privately, she supposed, with much of the fervor and persuasiveness of his public speeches." Munro shows us southwestern Ontario: the places where we live, the people we move among, our conversations. Most clearly of all, she shows us the way we talk, leaving out all kinds of things which the listener has to fill in. Munro offers no "explanations" and very few connections. _It dawned on me one day that reading short fiction is more like reading poems than it is like reading novels. Sean O‘Faotain, an Irish short stories. They end too soon, | used to Our storyâ€"telling: Open Secrets gallery 12 inc. So . . . who likes to read short stories? I have to admit that I had to leam to read 0 o Chicken or Beef Stir Fry Includes Choice of: Mashed Potatoes, Fries or Rice, Vegetable of the Day, Chef Salad or Caesar Salad, or Homemade Soup of the Day, 2 slices of Garlic Bread and Dessert Includes Choice of: Mashed Potatoes, Fries or Rice, Vegetable $ of the Day, Chef Salad or Caesar Salad, or Homemade 7 9 5 Soup of the Day, 2 slices of Garlic Bread and Dessert 0 6 Other Lunch Specials Daily â€" from $4.95 OPEN _ NEW HOURS Mon. 7:00 â€" 2:00 p.m. Tues. â€" Thurs. 7:00 â€" 8:30 p.m. Friday 7:00 â€" 9:00 p.m. Saturday _ 8:00 â€" 8:00 p.m. Sunday 8:30 â€" 8:00 p.m. DEARBOR: Dearborn‘s Supper Specials We offer clegant Catering for your Weddings, Banguets and Special Occasions. We still sell the best Allâ€"Day Breakfast MY/IL4 â€" in thearea . WAAA .' â€" _ Seating up to 100 people 1 Mflflquh::-d'::lnhflw â€"A1L MA DL NJ\ RESTAURANT 105 Lexington Dr., Waterloo, Ontario 746â€"0321 > It is no secret that Munro is a masterful writer and no surprise that this book is richly satisfying. Judith Miller is Associate Professor of English at Renison College at University of Waterioo. "And now what?" is where the reader comes in, watching and appreciating the characters of Munro‘s stories and her ways of giving us those stories. Her ways reflect the natural rambling of our minds, our speaking and our ways of telling stories. The books were armranged, "I believed â€" reflecting a more or less natural ambling of the mind, in which treasures new and forgotâ€" ten might be continually surfacing. I had taken all this care, and now what?" leaving out the duller times. Leaving me to puzzle over why those events are the memoâ€" rable ones. in Lives of Girls and Women, a book about the writerâ€"asâ€"aâ€"youngâ€"womnan, Munro wamns her readers that she draws on the methods of sensationalist newspapers, family histories, 19th century poems and novels, encyclopeâ€" dias, high school annuals, and hymns. She continues to use all of those approaches in this collection. She adds letter writing. quotations from philosophers, and oral storyâ€"telling. A bookseller in one story, musing about the arangement of books on her shelves, gives us a clue to the reading of the stories: 0 0 0 00 a e 0 0 a 0 0 0 o 0 a a a a a a a a 6 6 6 o 0 6 0 a 0 a o a e OPEN DINNER Tuesday â€" Sunday 2980 King (Fairway Rd.) At The Charcoal Steak House , Phone 658-6700 4 r NEW IN TOWN? OYSTERS ROCKEFELLER LET US PUT OUT THE MAT FOR YOU! be sure to call 1.75 each PASTA & SEAFOOD GRILL 893â€"2911 NEW OWNERSHIP Cong.\â€"~ NEW PRICES 7 Soon 2 / Art & Framing Sale On Now SlONwé" e At. 1 AG oncfi’lpurefi,fi’@. 5 Puteri AAS! 20%. 10%.., ~"eayz * Jaitonsl c Ces; ~a’77er- and an Pm uin s Rewnts ad. g/n\mgl\ Expires Nov. 30/94 & \/\7\] CANADIAN FINE ART & PROFESSIONAL FRAMING 12 University Ave. (at King) Waterion 886â€"2020 WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1994 â€" PAGE 23

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