The 4th Rose story is not one of Munro's best

Unfortunately Alice Munro's story Simon's Luck is the weakest of the series of "Rose" stories in her 1996 Selected Stories - of course the bar is extremely high for Alice the Great, and this story has some excellent moments, but a few things for me separate it from the preceding 4 in the series: somehow, the Rose character as we see her now, a theater professor in a university town in Ontario, something of a national celebrity because of an interview show she used to run but never recovered from her divorce and not as well off as others suspect, still very acerbic about the academic life and surprisingly insecure - does not seem an inevitable or even a likely "next stage" from the Rose as we've seen her grow and change. Second, although Munro is famous for the shifting perspectives of her stories and for the great material she leaves to the side as a mere hint or dash of color, this story does seem particularly out of focus: Rose meets a fellow prof (Simon) at a faculty party, they have a romantic-sexual weekend, and then he disappears from her life - and she heads off west leaving past and obligations behind. To me, this does not seem realistic or likely or even in character - and if it is to be so, how do we explain Simon's shifting affections? He's a user? He's just not that into her? Or the pancreatic cancer that will take his life has affected his behavior? No, he would have spoken to her about this. The long car ride west away from the sunset is nicely drawn, but a kind of typical grad-student story trope, when you get right down to it. In fact, strongest element of the story is the grad student who lashes out at Rose in a tirade during the party, and then gets hustled off-stage. Too bad - it would be good to know more about him and what sparked his fury. (And maybe in another story we will?) Munro's changing the title of the story in its various publications (from Emily, a character either dropped or stripped of her name, to the present title - titles have never been Munro's forte) seems to indicate her own uncertainty about focus - a fine story, but not one of her very best.