Summer Reading

Have you begun reading Alice Munro yet?  No?!  Well, you’re missing out. 

Summarizing an entire Munro story might be possible, but it’s certainly not desirable.  Instead, simply enjoy this passage (the first of three Munro posts coming your way in the days ahead), specially chosen to whet your appetite.  

The sentences are so gorgeous---and stealthy---no one can sneak up on you like Munro---read her and you'll know just what I mean---that you might even want to read aloud.

From “Lying Under the Apple Tree” (The View from Castle Rock, 2006):

I did not speak much about myself and I did not listen to him all that closely.  His talk was like a curtain of easy rain between me and the trees, the light and shadows on the road, the clear-running creek, the butterflies, and all that part of myself that would have paid attention to these things if I had been alone.  A lot of me was under cover, as it was with my friends on Saturday nights.  Bu the change now was not so deliberate and voluntary. I was half-hypnotized, not just by the sound of his voice but by the bright breadth of shoulders in a clean, short-sleeved shirt, by his tawny throat and thick arms.  He had washed himself with Lifebuoy soap---I knew the smell of it as everybody did---but washing was as far as most men went in those days, they didn’t bother about the sweat that would accumulate in the near future. So I could smell that too.  And just faintly the smell of horses, bridles, barns, and hay.