Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

As always, Alice Munro surprises us. While the nine stories in this new collection could not be written by anyone else, they are subtly different. The title story, for example, ranges from small-town Ontario just after the war to a near-deserted hotel on the bald Saskatchewan prairie. The setting may be strange, uncharted Munro territory, but the plot is familiar, with two lives changed forever by a random act of mischief that can never be revealed.
"Floating Bridge" is also a typical Alice Munro story, but different. Forty-two-year-old Jinny is fighting cancer, and the front room in their middle-class home is turned into a sickroom. Her husband hires a girl to look after her, and they visit the girl's trailer park relatives. Class tensions are exposed ("You know you'll hurt their feelings," he whispered. "They're trying to be nice to you."), and then something both unbelievable and totally believable happens to conclude the story in a way the reader will never...