The Other Country

In this study of Alice Munro's writing style, James Carscallen reveals a consistency to her works previously unsuspected, creating an unconscious thread throughout Munro's creations. Carscallen sets out his interpretive model as it applies to individual stories, and then shifts his emphasis from theory to practice and extends his scope from individual stories to the groupings they make. He argues that Munro's work offers the reader the great human myths, but as half-concealed -- both from the characters themselves and from the reader -- behind a surface ordinariness that seems anything but mythical.

James Carscallen teaches English at Victoria College, University of Toronto.