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Open Secrets: Stories
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679755623
ISBN: 0679755624
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 294
Publication Date: November 07, 1995
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: November 07, 1995
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
In these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia. And Munro shows us how one woman's romantic tale of capture and escape in the high Balkans may end up inspiring another woman who is fleeing a husband and lover in present-day Canada."Open Secrets is a book that dazzles with its faith in language and in life."--New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Whole Lives Packed into 30-50 Pages
The best story in this collection is "Carried Away," and it, like many of the others, jumps around in time, and from character to character, revealing slowly what exactly it might be about, and then about-facing and revealing that it is about something else entirely, and then about-facing again, then again, until, finally, on the last page, one realizes that the story itself has been modeled after the very complexity of any group of lives as they move among one another, never quite knowing one another's ... Read More
Rating:  - A Couple of Clever Letter Writing Stories
This book contains eight short stories written by Alice Munro, a gifted short story writer. I read them all and was sadly disappointed that they did not capture me as much as I'd hoped. My favorite stories were CARRIED AWAY and A WILDERNESS STATION. I really liked her clever usage of 'letter writing' as letters were intertwined into the stories. I also found some great lines in her stories, but it wasn't one of those "I can't put this book down" books. To use one of the phrases in her book she is 'a ... Read More
Rating: - If you want a story spoon fed to you, go see a movie!
If you want to know exactly what's going on, if you want to get all the nuances the first time around, if you want to be fed a simple little story, go see a movie. Don't read this book.
If, however, you enjoy reading, if you like puzzling over plots and taking notes, if you like realistic characters with realistic problems, if you like words and sentences, if you like books...read "Open Secrets."
Munro is "great literature." I suspect that in a few hundred years, Hemingway stories will have withered ... Read More
Rating: - I've read this at least three times.
It astounds me that some people find Munro's prose boring; hypnotic is the word I'd use. These stories aren't talk shows or soap operas or "Oprah stories" with heartwarming messages at the end. What they're about, in my view, is the strange and slippery role that time and memory play in our lives, and in that sense they join the tradition of Proust and Wordsworth. Munro is fascinated by experiences of disorientation or dislocation in which one no longer knows quite who one is, and by our stubborn attempts ... Read More
Rating: - Found treasure
I don't recognize Munro's work in the reviews (editorial and customer) I've read here. Are these stories about women? Are they heavy and soporific? Not in my view. For the most part, I see loving, humorous looks at a piece of geography and its inhabitants, stories which are beautifully written, tightly woven, relaxed, and full of delicious discoveries about people and places. Lots of short stories end with a bang and then they are... over. Not Munro's. Hers never glib, never lazy. They are daring, warming, ... Read More
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