This week, Canadians heard about the enormity of Andrea Skinner’s suffering, following sexual abuse by her stepfather, and her mother Alice Munro’s decision to stay with and protect him.
Following this, I, like so many readers around the world, am feeling a profound sense of shock and loss. For much of my life, Munro’s stories have been a solace. As an introverted pre-teen, I felt seen by Lives of Girls and Women. Long before I learned to admire and study Munro’s technical mastery, I was grateful for the wisdom with which she wrote about girlhood.
As the stories about Munro shift and gather darkness, so, too, do the stories she authored. For me as a literature scholar, the question is not should we return to them, but how will we read them now?
