Dance of the Happy Shades - (Vintage International) by Alice Munro (Paperback)

About the Book

A young girl gets an unexpected glimpse into her father's past. A married woman tries to release her homebound sister after the death of their mother. The audience at a piano recital receives a transforming surprise. These early stories conjure ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which writer Alice Munro is celebrated.

Book Synopsis

Fifteen stunning short stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, "a true master of the form" (Salman Rushdie).

"How does one know when one is in the grip of art--of a major talent? . . . It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro's stories."--The Wall Street Journal

A young girl gets an unexpected glimpse into her father's past when she realizes the sales call they've made one summer afternoon during the Great Depression is to his old sweetheart. A married woman, returning home after the death of her invalid mother, tries to release the sister who'd stayed behind as their mother's caretaker. The audience at a children's piano recital receives a surprising lesson in the power of art to transform when a not-quite-right student performs with unexpected musicality and a spirit of joy.

In Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.

Review Quotes

Praise for Alice Munro

"Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does."--Jhumpa Lahiri

"She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion."--Jonthan Franzen

"The authority she brings to the page is just lovely."--Elizabeth Strout

"She's the most savage writer I've ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive."--Jeffery Eugenides

"Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can."--Julian Barnes

"She is a short-story writer who . . . reimagined what a story can do."--Lorrie Moore

"There's probably no one alive who's better at the craft of the short story."--Jim Shepard

"A true master of the form."--Salman Rushdie

"A wonderful writer."--Joyce Carol Oates

About the Author

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.