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Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013, and the key to her writing is short stories.

The Nobel Prize presentation speech summed it up - Reading one of Alice Munro's stories is like watching a cat walk across a laid dinner table. A brief short story can often cover decades, summarizing a life, as she moves deftly between different periods. No wonder Alice Munro is often able to say more in thirty pages than an ordinary novelist is capable of in three hundred. She is a virtuoso of the elliptical and the master of the contemporary short story.

The Family Furnishings collection offers twenty-four accomplished tales. It is worth time and effort to read each story slowly, relish the details, and ponder her characters and their life choices.

I liked this line from the story Too Much Happiness - "Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind," her friend Marie Mendelson has told her. "When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her."

Observe life with Alice Munro. Read Family Furnishings.