Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro (2008)

A collection of ten stories by the Canadian Nobel laureate.

Book Review: Too Much Happiness isn't all that happy, it can go to the dark and harsh and strange. Most of the stories try to find ways to scrape a little redemption from the pain and jolts of life. Not all. Be prepared for stories that begin in the safe and ordinary, but then venture into the grimmer realities of a life you don't want -- it can be a tough go. Not for the faint of heart. The first three stories were some of the best, but that set a good tone for the rest of the book: I always expected excellence and I always got it. You will not find writing in Too Much Happiness that is cliched, or easy, or that panders to the reader. Even the lesser stories were strong, enjoyable, and well worth reading. The entire collection provides ample evidence of Alice Munro's insight and intelligence; I see why she deserved to win the Nobel Prize. Her stories proceed with mathematical predictability, take some tangents, and knock the reader off the proverbial feet. One recurring theme of Too Much Happiness is seemingly decent people being unspeakably cruel; a second was people trying to find just a little something of their own in the midst of a lot of nothing. Three random notes: (1) the title story, the longest in the book, is quite different from all the others, and made me wonder if perhaps Munro was considering turning it into a novel; (2) for me the ending of the third story, "Wenlock Edge," baffled me and I was lost. No spoilers, but if this happens to you, the explanation is simple and easily found on the internet; (3) an extra added feature for any aspiring writers is that reading Too Much Happiness provides a perfect lesson on how to craft a short story. Alice Munro is noted as a short-story writer -- I'm not sure if she's written more than one novel. In the story "Fiction," a character's reading a book that "is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book's authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside." No Ms. Munro, you're safely inside.  [4½★]