One of Munro's best-known stories

Friend of My Youth, a title story to one of her collections and one of the best-known and one of the best, for that matter, of Alice Munro's many stories, is also another great illustration of her technique - complex narrative design that breaks rules and barriers, but material that is traditional, naturalistic, and accessible. In this story, Munro begins by reflecting on her mother and on her last memories of her mother's fatal illness - is this really Munro reflecting, as in a personal memoir, or is the narrator a character, a fiction? - it feels quite realistic and seems to jibe largely with what we know of Munro's early life, but that may be just an effect she's artfully created - but it encases the story in a jewel box of realism - and then she recollects learning about her mother's early adulthood when she was a teacher in a small town in Ontario and boarding with a family of a strict religious sect in a very rustic and isolated farm house. It sounds like the beginning of a nasty gothic tale of suffering, but the mom actually got to like this family, befriended the older sister - as the younger was quite unhealthy – and this embedded story becomes almost like a realistic fairy tale – a man moves in and is expected to marry the older sister, gets seduced by or seduces the younger, marries her, she dies after multiple failed pregnancies and still births, we expect now that he will marry his first intended, the older sister, but no he marries the his late wife’s nurse – older sister twice jilted – a story told in quite a straightforward manner. But wait! – we’re soon jolted far forward into the near present – as the narrator’s mother recounts her sending a letter of commiseration to older sister and being curtly put in her place: mind your own business. Many, many years later – older sister gets in touch w/ mother again – which brings us back to the opening of the story, with narrator trying to piece together info about her mother’s life. So this story contains memoir, country saga, naturalistic personal drama, some postmodern playfulness with levels of illusion and reality – and as with all of Munro’s fiction demands a great deal of attention in that we can never be sure where the narration will move on the board, yet is on a grander level very easy to follow as the scenes are so vivid, the details so telling, and the characters so rounded – and yet quirky, unpredictable, and unique.