Family Furnishings - (Vintage International) by Alice Munro (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"An extraordinary collection" (San Francisco Chronicle) of twenty-four short stories from Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro.

"Superb . . . Munro is a writer to be cherished."--NPR

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune

A selection of Alice Munro's most accomplished and powerfully affecting short fiction from 1995 to 2014, these stories encompass the fullness of human experience, from the wild exhilaration of first love (in "Passion") to the punishing consequences of leaving home ("Runaway") or ending a marriage ("The Children Stay"). And in stories that Munro has described as "closer to the truth than usual"--"Dear Life," "Working for a Living," and "Home"--we glimpse the author's own life.

Subtly honed with her hallmark precision, grace, and compassion, these stories illuminate the quotidian yet astonishing particularities in the lives of men and women, parents and children, friends and lovers as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, suffer defeat, set off into the unknown, or find a way to be in the world.

Review Quotes

"What a stunning, subtle and sympathetic explorer of the heart Munro is."--The Washington Post

"Generations to come will relish and study Family Furnishings. . . . A superb introduction for those new to her work, and a reminder to longtime fans that Munro is a writer to be cherished."--NPR

"Brilliant. . . . In the simplest of words, and with the greatest of power, she makes us see and hear an 'unremarkable' scene we will never forget."--The New York Review of Books

"Turn to just about any page and you'll discover a brilliant insight into human behavior. . . . Family Furnishings reminds us that Munro is our greatest contemporary short story writer."--USA Today

"[An] extraordinary collection. . . . Munro seems to have gotten hold of our own darkest feelings about the people in our lives and transformed them, gloriously, into art."--San Francisco Chronicle

"The preeminent short-fiction writer of her time. . . . Astonishing. . . . Stunning. . . . Remind[s] us that fiction, at its most profound and moving, is about human endurance, which makes it very much a reflection of reality."--Los Angeles Times

"Munro's literary genius for the short-story form has been widely deemed incomparable. The Canadian writer captures those small moments that reverberate through ordinary lives in meticulous prose. Her economy in words fashions a language that pierces the heart."--New York Daily News

"These are human stories, and great ones. . . . Nobody can tell a tale, spin a character, break a heart, the way Alice Munro can."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Munro may have arrived at the end of her career, but her stories keep changing, as works of art tend to do. . . . Because Munro's people often act unpredictably--they wind up doing things they hadn't known they were going to do and startle themselves--the stories, even on repeated readings, retain their original suspense, their sense that anything can happen."--The New York Times Book Review

"If there's literary pleasure greater than reading Alice Munro, it must be rereading Alice Munro."--The Seattle Times

"It is no exaggeration to state that Munro's short stories are among the finest that have ever been written. She's sure to endure alongside Poe, Hemingway and O'Connor. . . . She's that rare writer who is able to match her early career achievements and even top them."--The Dallas Morning News

"A writer who slowly fashioned a house of fiction large enough for both a room of her own and all of her family furnishings--ensuring that she herself had space to maneuver while others still had plenty of space to stretch out and live. Those others include us, her very lucky readers."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Munro's stories are remarkable for their evocation of places and the people who live there, for ambiguities, their ellipses, and their deftness. Her prose is lucid: ranging from delicacy to forthright attack, sometimes witty, ironic."--The Washington Times

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.