Let's give the great Alice Munro one Mulligan

The last and title story in Alice Munro's "Too Much Happiness" is unfortunately the weakest in the collection, but we'll give the great Munro one Mulligan, right? She's obviously trying something a little different in this story - it's longer than most of what she's written, set in Europe - a very rare if not unique break from her Canadian milieu - and altogether feels Old World and for that matter fusty. In a note, Munro says she read a good biography of the main character, a female mathematician/novelist whose career success was hindered by the sexism of the era (she has to work in Stockholm rather than at one of the major universities) and she has a complex love life, marrying for convenience, then spurned by the man she loves, though it's all a little hard to follow in this story, which is rather sketchy and built around just a few episodes in her life, the rest just touched upon in a few sentences. Yes, it is good material, but it feels unworked, and I'm left wondering what Munro added to the source material. I would think she could have explored this woman's life as both novelist and mathematician, but we learn nothing about her writing - an opportunity missed. The character - what's her name? Sophia maybe? - is a Russian emigre. English-language writers seem endlessly fascinated with the deaths of Russian writers and wanderers. Carver wrote one of his last stories about Chekhov's death (obviously they were kindred spirits in their physical suffering), so many stories about the death of Tolstoy - and Munro's trying a different take, with a feminist take. Not a great story - but she is a great writer, and always pushing the boundaries of the genre.