I can't not nominate a Canadian treasure (and Nobel Prize winner) here. If we're doing short stories, how can we not consider Alice Munro, one of the great short story writers of all time. There are lots of possible books to choose from, but I'll nominate:
Alice Munro's Best: Selected Stories. This will be a great introduction to her work, and will be enjoyable even for those who have read some of the stories before.
The blurb for this on Amazon is:
Quote:
In her lengthy and fascinating introduction Margaret Atwood says “Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time. . . . Among writers themselves, her name is spoken in hushed tones.”
This splendid gift edition is sure to delight Alice Munro’s growing body of admirers, what Atwood calls her “devoted international readership.” Long-time fans of her stories will enjoy meeting old favourites, where their new setting in this book may reveal new sides to what once seemed a familiar story; devoted followers may even dispute the exclusion of a specially-beloved story. Readers lucky enough to have found her recently will be delighted, as one masterpiece succeeds another.
The 17 stories are carefully arranged in the order in which she wrote them, which allows us to follow the development of her range. “A Wilderness Station,” for example, breaks “short story rules” by taking us right back to the 1830s then jumping forward more than 100 years. “The Albanian Virgin” destroys the idea that her stories are set in B.C. or in Ontario’s “Alice Munro Country.” And “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the story behind the film Away From Her, takes us far from the world of young girls learning about sex into unflinching old age.
This is a book to read slowly, savouring each story. It deserves a place in every Canadian book-lover’s library.
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This book is available for free from the Amazon Prime Lending Library, or Kindle Unlimited, or for a quite reasonable price to buy.
Amazon US
Amazon CA
Amazon UK
Kobo
Note: I've included the Kobo location for completeness, but you'd have to have more money than sense to buy it from them. The Amazon version is 1/3rd or less the cost even if you buy it rather than getting it via Amazon Prime Lending Library or Kindle Unlimited, and has no DRM, so conversion is trivial.