Vox Populi:

I have read many of Alice Munro’s stories but not all of them. I like to feel some are still waiting for me. A conceit on my part at my age but then again, maybe not. They may be dark yet illuminating presences I will welcome down the uncertain road. As to the ones I’ve read, and, again, it seems important to note every telling quirk, even of readership, given that Munro was so taken with every telling quirk, not unto eccentricity, just unto mundane mania, the one for me that takes it to the utmost limit –and one could almost sponsor a contest in that regard – is “Child’s Play” from the incongruously titled volume “Too Much Happiness.”

   In that story, two girls of nine or ten drown a somewhat older girl who is, in the terminology of the story, a “special,” as in special education. The two girls have met at summer camp and due to their showing up wearing identical hats and having first names that rhyme – Marlene and Charlene – they become instant pals (“twins”) who compare notes on everything, a female bonding endeavor the story’s  narrator, Marlene, admits that she never quite got with as an adult, which tells you about Marlene, an anthropologist who is, despite her competent tone, a stranger, an outsider, and, like Camus’ famous protagonist, a murderer. Or perhaps she is a stranger because of that tone, because of a certain acquiescence to society on the part of someone who studies societies elsewhere. Or perhaps she is merely human – a shuddering category.

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