Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Munro, Alice (Vol. 95) - George Woodcock (essay date Summer 1986)

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George Woodcock (essay date Summer 1986)

SOURCE: "The Plots of Life: The Realism of Alice Munro," in Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 93, No. 2, Summer, 1986, pp. 235-50.

[Woodcock was a Canadian educator, editor, author, and critic. In the following essay, he explores realism in Munro's writing, particularly as it relates to her younger female characters.]

But the development of events on that Saturday night; that fascinated me; I felt that I had had a glimpse of the shameless, marvellous, shattering absurdity with which the plots of life, though not of fiction, are improvized. (Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades)

There is a challenging ambivalence in Alice Munro's stories and her open-ended episodic novels, a glimmering fluctuation between actuality and fictional reality, or, if one prefers it, a tension between autobiography and invention which she manipulates so superbly that both elements are used...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Helen Hoy (essay date Spring 1980)
   2. Alice Munro (essay date September 1982)
   3. Lorraine M. York (essay date 1983)
   4. George Woodcock (essay date Summer 1986)
   5. Lorraine York (essay date Winter 1987)
   6. Judith Timson (essay date 7 May 1990)
   7. Mary Jo Salter (review date 14 May 1990)
   8. Reamy Jansen (essay date Winter 1989–90)
   9. Carol Shields (review date 7 February 1991)
   10. Katherine J. Mayberry (essay date Fall 1992)
   11. Josephine Humphreys (review date 11 September 1994)
   12. Ann Hulbert (review date 22 December 1994)
   13. Joan London (review date 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright