Chance, soon, silence

I worship her
Listening to these stories for the third time. Mesmerized by the writer’s skill and storytelling capabilities. RIP the queen of short stories.

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loved it!

Stories were great and narrator did a good job. Overall I really enjoyed the book.

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3 people found this helpful

Excellent

I love the carefully crafted characters and lives that this author consistently weaves into such captivating reads. Sometimes refecting a close up tidbit of myself, sometimes a totally different but believable world. I especially appreciate not bring able to guess or predict what will happen in any of them. I'm in awe of her storytelling.

The reader did a perfect job telling these as well, capturing the nuance of voice and mood the whole way through.

A minor downside was the chapter beginning and ending misalignment and lack of titles in this download.

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3 people found this helpful

Nostalgic and Quaint

I picked up this read because I enjoyed some of her works in high school and was curious if I would still. The stories were good and I enjoyed the vignette style, particularly "tricks" and "powers." The narrator was good, maybe a bit mundane but chalk it up to Munro's prose. The part I struggled with was that Audible's chapter delineation didn't line up with the short stories, and it wasn't clear where each story started and ended. The narrator did state the story name before she started, but it was run in with the story before and easy to miss.

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5 people found this helpful

Alice Munro is an astute observer of bleak lives

The stories are brilliant - in a depressing way. This narrator however is not up to the task…a robotic, grating voice makes it a slog through to the end.

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Open my eyes to short stories

Normally I do not like short stories collections... I find them, well, too short! But Alice Munro is an acclaimed writer. So I decided to give her stories a try.

My conclusion? It certainly exceeded my expectations in many ways. The stories have a lot of depth to it... I guess a lot can be packed into a terse story in the hands of a skilled writer. Without spending too many words, the author managed to create vivid, life-like characters. The stories are short, but it felt like vignettes into the lives of the well know characters. Yes, some of the stories in the book does have a common thread that serves to link them together (so you can say there is a bit of 'cheating' going on here). But that's not a complaint, just a simple observation.

So my thought in the end? Very good stories, extremely well written. I just wonder how much better some of the stories could be if it was a 'full length' novel ;D

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Strange

Well, this my first time reading any of the works by Alice Monroe.
I don’t understand what the draw is. I feel the book is a complete smattering of her own experiences with imagination mixed-in to complete the stories.
Not the greatest book I’ve read. In fact if I’d had to sit in one spot to read the book myself and not be able to keep busy doing far more important things, like vacuuming and other housework, I’d have dropped this book within the first 15 minutes, having given the book a complete chance to mesmerize me.
Boring, hum-drum, plain old everyday experiences that could be written by almost anyone. The reader did a wonderful job. She’s the reason I finished the book entirely.

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Short stories of women in different life places

All the stories take place in Canada. Some I found interesting, some I didn't. Some I would have like to see go farther in the persons life. It is a pretty mixed bag,

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Great stories, one quibble on good narration

Hard to pick a favourite volume of Munro stories but this one is up there. I wish Audible.ca would offer many more. I have all her collections in hard copy and also enjoy hearing them read. All these are, as usual, excellent. Especially good to have a trilogy of them in this collection. Several show Munro’s excellent handling of time over one life. Narration is fine, very clear, good with the different voices, maybe a little warm and dramatic in spots for Munro’s sensibility. One quibble: If Audible is going to use American narrators, I wish they would check on pronunciation of Canadian place names; it just grates a little when they’re mispronounced. #Audible1.

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16 people found this helpful

Down to Earth Writing

Love Alice Monro read by this lady. She captures you and holds on. Munro has such insight to the workings of a woman’s mind. Her sentences are interesting and make you want to keep listening.

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