Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories - Paperback

by Alice Munro (Author)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro come nine short stories with "the intimacy of a family photo album and the organic feel of real life" (The New York Times)

"In Munro's hands, as in Chekhov's, a short story is more than big enough to hold the world--and to astonish us, again and again."--Chicago Tribune

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

In the nine breathtaking stories that make up this collection, Alice Munro creates narratives that loop and swerve like memory, conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.

The fate of a strong-minded housekeeper with a "frizz of reddish hair," just entering the dangerous country of old-maidhood, is unintentionally (and deliciously) reversed by a teenaged girl's practical joke. A college student visiting her aunt for the first time and recognizing the family furniture stumbles on a long-hidden secret and its meaning in her own life. An inveterate philanderer finds the tables turned when he puts his wife into an old-age home. A young cancer patient stunned by good news discovers a perfect bridge to her suddenly regained future. A woman recollecting an afternoon's wild lovemaking with a stranger realizes how the memory of that encounter has both changed for her and sustained her through a lifetime.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best--tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.

Front Jacket

In the nine breathtaking stories that make up her celebrated tenth collection, Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves.
A tough-minded housekeeper jettisons the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager's practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife's nursing-home romance. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is Munro at her best, tirelessly observant, serenely free of illusion, deeply and gloriously humane.

Author Biography

Alice Munro is the author of thirteen collections of stories--including Dear Life, Runaway, and Too Much Happiness--as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. Among the many awards and prizes she received are three Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes in Canada; the Rea Award; the Lannan Literary Award; the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the International Booker Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Alice Munro died in 2024.