The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() And in "Labor Day Dinner," the divorced woman is trying again, but with a sometimes-cruel man ("Your armpits are flabby," he says) whose love must be periodically revived by her displays of (unfeigned) indifference. Two other stories feature the hurt and compromise involved in "casual" affairs-casual for the man, perhaps, less so for the woman. ![]() ![]() ![]() In "Dulse," an editor/poet vacations alone, away from a troubled affair-and is confronted by sensuality on the one hand and the "lovely, durable shelter" of celibate retreat on the other. Here, though a few of these eleven new stories reach back to that core material effectively, the focus is looser, the specifics are less arresting, and Munro's alter-egos have moved on to a real yet not-always-compelling dilemma: over 40, long-divorced, children grown, these women waver "on the edge of caring and not caring"-about men, love, sex. In Lives of Girls and Women and The Beggar Maid (the Flo and Rose stories), Canadian short-story writer Munro drew unusual strength and sharpness from the vivid particulars of growing-up with-and growing out from-a stifling yet intense Canadian background. ![]()
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