Previously in this series.
Your sister met a man once. He loved her despite — or perhaps because of — her chronic illness.
He is your husband now. You have no children.
Nothing has ever happened to you except one thing, decades ago.
You are having an affair with a married man. His sister knows, and hates you. She has volunteered to drive you back to town.
You see the man you once thought you’d marry. He is married to someone less attractive than you. But aren’t you both less attractive now, after all this time?
You are thoughtful, well-read, and ruthlessly practical. You never marry.
You went to a place once. Decades later, you return under very different circumstances.
You see truths about people that no one in your small Canadian town wants to admit. A married man can sense this about you, and he offers to take you for a drive.
You met a man once. Decades later, you read his name in the newspaper. You feel nothing.
You are in a car with a man who hates himself. He offers you a drink of his whiskey. You decline, and something in the air between you changes. The afternoon is ruined.
You met a man once. Decades later, you married him.
You visit an elderly person in a nursing home, and they accidentally reveal a secret that explains your entire life. You carry on, more or less as you always have.
You have kept a secret from your daughter that explains her entire life. She dies.
A murder happens somewhere in your social circle. You carry on, more or less as you always have.
Your mother was a schoolteacher. She named you after a tragic heroine from the Western canon.
Your father is having an affair.
You own one fancy dress, but you aren’t wearing it today. You’re wearing something sturdy and practical, because there’s no use getting all dressed up just to go for a walk with a local widower.
It has been a long day, and you don’t know what to make of it. You fall into an uneasy sleep, and you have a dream that explains everything. It is frightening, but also peaceful.
You run a small business and keep to yourself, and you barely think about the thing that happened to you. It’s almost like it happened to someone else.
A man comes into the bar where you work. Something in his manner puts you on edge. A few days later, you see him across a crowded street. He looks troubled.
You have a conversation with a woman. It feels important, but you can’t figure out why. You marry her son.
You murder your husband. Decades later, you realize it hardly mattered.
You have sex. You carry on, more or less as you always have.
Tags: alice munro, books, eve asher, how to tell what novel you’re in
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Your mother was a schoolteacher AND only that one thing ever happened.
I can hear Alice in my head even as I read your list.
Thinking I need to make my novel sound less dramatically Canadian, esp. since I HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE despite living in Alaska forever.
A man condescends to you. You say nothing. A woman says something that wouldn’t be snide, if it were someone else saying it. You say nothing. You never speak again, but not because of them. You simply have nothing that needs to be said.
The thing is, that’s exactly what it’s like to live in a small Canadian town. Any woman who lives in a small Canadian town all her life could be a Munro protagonist. This is why I moved to Toronto.
No sunshine sketches for us.
Sunshine Sketches was written by A Man, so perhaps the Canadian Experience is very gendered.
Yes, yes, it is. At least in literature.
Sunshine Sketches was written by A Man, so perhaps the Canadian Experience is very gendered.
That sounds like a good way to wind up in a Margaret Atwood book. BEWARE THE PIGOONS.
You have an affair with a man who lives in an a-frame house.
Alternately, you leave your job to help your husband reonvate an a-frame house. He has an affair. His mistress takes your place in the house.
Alternately alternately, you leave your husband and move into an a-frame house.
Which reminds me that Ann Beattie’s novel Chilly Scenes of Winter also involves an affair and an A-frame house. How many examples do you need before it gets to be a genre?
You had a cousin and when you were younger she smoked a cigarette and left a lipstick stain on it.
Sometimes, even now, you remember being in a car with her.
I am tragically under-read concerning Munro. Considering how many of these end with things not mattering, is she a secret nihilist?
Nah, just Canadian.
yes!
“You murder your husband. Decades later, you realize it hardly mattered.”
Favorite.
Brilliant! Also I’m hearing these in Tim Gunn’s voice: “Carry on!”
Sometimes the comments on THE TOAST are better or at least as good as the essays themselves. I see this as a positive.
I love these. And I am very glad not to be in an Alice Munro story.
*checks for latent nihilism*
You recall being beaten by your father. You remember how sick to your stomach the beatings made you feel. But now, you feel nothing.
(Side note: Am I the only one who would feel a little sick and disoriented when reading any of her “beatings” stories?)
Nothing has ever happened to you except one thing, decades ago.
This made me laugh out loud.
It kind of got me in the solar plexus, even as I laughed. (It’s been a long couple of years.)
When you were a child you played housekeeping games. Decades later, you keep your own house.
You went on a train to somewhere unlike the town where you grew up. The people were different. The chickens were different, too. You went back to the town where you grew up and stayed there for decades.
Someone moved to the city. Someone else in town mentioned hearing something about her. It wasn’t clear, but probably it was a bad thing.
My new ambition is to be thoughtful, well-read and ruthlessly practical. Also to read some Alice Munro.
This explains why I can’t stand short stories, except those written by P.G. Wodehouse.
A relative from your small-town past visits you in your new life in a city. You feel ashamed of your upbringing. Later, you use your relative’s life as the basis for your novel. You feel nothing.
You fantasize how your husband’s first wife might have fantasized about killing you.
Your husband/boyfriend/lover/whatever is 13-14 years older than you. Neither of you want a classic funeral.
Your husband/ex-husband/father/stepfather/lover/boyfriend/whatever went through a carpentry phase.
One day you leave. No one will ever understand why.
You go to a new place where no one is particularly mean to you, but they’re not very welcoming either. The vivacious child you meet dies.
Nothing has ever happened to you except one thing, decades ago.
Oh, my God, it’s like Alice Munro KNOWS ME!
Somebody you knew only vaguely in your small town drowned.
You recall the time when, as a child, you anxiously awaited the visit of an uncle, because he always brought a gift. But this one time he died: no visit; no gift.
Thank you, Toast and commentators, for making me laugh out loud. I hope Ms. Munro gets to see these.
Sunshine Sketches was written by A Man, so perhaps the Canadian Experience is very gendered.
Alice Munro is way up there among my favorite authors. But I chortled at the comments…one thing or nothing has happened to these women, but you still keep on reading.
I feel all suffocated by existence now THANK YOU.
Yes, yes, it is. At least in literature.
Let’s do “how you can tell if you are in a Barbara Pym novel.” I’ll start:
you have to share a bathroom
you’re secretly in love with an archdeacon
you are inclined to be stout (by B. Pym standards ie 10 stone and 5’6″)
you are a distressed gentlewoman
you’re a stalker before the term stalker was invented
you’ve had sex a few times but are glad you don’t have to put up with that sort of nonsense anymore
Eve Asher this made my early morning. Now I will go on with my day as if this never happened and think of it only once when walking by a field where I kissed a man, once.
You are a having an affair with a man you don’t particularly like, maybe or maybe not to get back at a husband you probably never loved. You consider ending one or the other of these relationships, but not seriously enough to go through with it. And it’s cold.
You came of age on a farm in rural Ontario in the 1940s where your alcoholic father’s callous treatment of the farm animals remains to this day, your preferred metaphor for how all human relationships are essentially domed by our own moral and intellectual cowardice.
You visit an ancient ruin in Scotland as a young woman on vacation to escape a bad relationship and by chance meet a man who is vaguely familiar, but shabby looking at the same time. Forty years later you think of him while driving by a gravel pit and realize he had been a good friend of your father’s back on the farm. A farm hand who plucked turkeys. You marvel at how time and tide waits for no man and keep on driving down the road, the peculiar but not unpleasant sunset casting shadows, and doubt, on everything.