Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

Alice Munro · 1931–2024 · Canada

Why it matters

A plain, overlooked housekeeper stumbles into an unlikely romance engineered by a stranger's forged letters, one of nine stories charting love's absurd, self-deceiving machinery. Munro at her most narratively sly; one story here became the film Away from Her.

At a glance

Deceptively casual plotting conceals tightly engineered narrative reversals.