Friend of My Youth

By: Alice Munro

Narrated by: Beth Fowler

In the powerful, haunting stories of Munro’s collection, men and women, in the midst of contemporary quandaries and crises, recall the long-buried yearnings, dreams, and hard choices that have given shape to their lives.

©1990 by Alice Munro (P)2000 by Blackstone Publishing

Chronicler of an era

I hadn’t read Alice Munro’s work before and felt she was too important a writer to miss. I might have gotten lost in the threads following the characters who she follows from childhood to old age, but the writing is straight forward, entertaining and clearly from the perspective of a writer in the 40s and 50s. This is the time of my Southern parents so I found it engaging even though these people are in Canada and the Northwest.

Wonderful early collection of short stories

It’s Alice Munro; nobody does it better! The performance is fine, as well. Most stories are about an hour long. Satisfying audiobook.

Such a sad decline in story telling…

Missed the slow depth of her usual perceptions leaving this pointless flat telling of her stories,
Very very disappointed.

Uninteresting people

Rambling.lives of uninteresting, unmotivated people who are cardboard thin as personalities and whom I would have thought to want to know

BOR-ing

Given the current, very bad posthumous publicity surrounding fellow Canadian Alice Munro, I decided to read this collection of her short stories. I have listened to 5 or 6 of these go-nowhere do-nothing selections and am packing it in. I enjoy quiet, ordinary novels and stories such as those written by Anne Tyler, but these Munro stories are just boring. The narration goes on and on, providing little more than subdued background accompaniment to whatever I happen to be doing, and that's about it. Nothing happens. Nothing.
It's like listening to paint dry.