Short stories
Dance of the Happy Shades
Alice Munro · 1968
Synopsis
Fifteen stories set in small towns of Ontario. A little girl accompanies her father, a travelling salesman, on his round, and a detour to see a woman he once knew reveals to her a part of his life she was unaware of. A woman returns in summer to her home town, months after the death of their sick mother, to the sister who stayed to nurse her. An old piano teacher keeps up, despite the parents' embarrassment, her pupils' annual recital.
Context
This first collection appeared from Ryerson Press, in Toronto, with a preface by Hugh Garner, when its author was thirty-seven, after some fifteen years of writing carried on between domestic chores and the bookshop she ran with her husband in Victoria: she said she had chosen the short form because she never had enough time at a stretch for anything else. She would publish thirteen more books, almost all of them collections.
Who it is for
Fairly long stories, which can be read separately; the 2002 French translation is also available in paperback.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award for 1968; the collection, long little known outside Canada, was not translated into Spanish until 2022.
Sources for this page 14
The pages consulted to check this page.