Too Much Happiness

Too Much Happiness is a collection of ten short stories, published in 2009, and the author is Alice Munro, a Canadian writer. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. I didn't know her name until she won the Nobel Prize, but I wanted to read her works when I found her books at a local library.

I've read the works of Raymond Carver before. But I don't think I like short stories very much because they often have little description of the situation, and depict many things with few words. Short stories are often more difficult than novels.

Some stories in this book give readers some thoughts about  life through long time.


Dimensions
Doree who is a chambermaid had bitter experience. Her young three children were murdered by her insane husband. She sometimes visits her ex-husband in jail by bus. One day when she is on the bus to visit him, an accident happens...


Fiction
Jon and Joyce who have high IQ score drop out of college and go away. Jon learned woodwork and Joyce becomes a music teacher for living. Jon employs a woman who has tattoos and was an alcohol abuser, and he falls in love with the woman. Joyce goes out their house and lives in town alone. Decades years passed, Joyce gets remarried to a professor. When her husband's birthday party was held, she meets a young writer. Joyce finds her book in a bookstore, and reads it. And then Joyce finds one story in this book that is about Joyce, Jon and that woman. The young writer was Joyce's music student.


Deep-holes
When a family goes on a picnic, Kent, one of the son, falls into a deep hole and breaks both of his legs. Kent became a college student, but he drops out of college and disappears. Sally, his mother, sometimes keeps in touch with him but loses trace of him by and by. One day his sister happens to see him on TV news, and then Sally sees him again. Sally finds her son becomes an incomprehensible person like a hermit or a homeless person. Parent-child gap.

Kent says, "Don't you get tired, Sally? Don't you get tires being clever? ..."


Face
A boy who has a big birthmark on the one side of his face made a friend with a girl. One day when they plays with, the girl paints red on the one side of her face, and she tells him to be the same as him with satisfaction. The boy gets hurt and cries, and their mothers breaks up. The girl and mother moves to town soon. When the boy becomes a college student, the mother tells him a story about the girl...


Child's play
Marlene and Charlene were good friends like a twin in an elementary school. Since they were grown, they haven't kept in touch. Marlene is a professor and when she published a book, she receives a letter from Charlene. But Marlene doesn't reply. Why does she avoid to make contact with her childhood friend? Their innocent and terrible play in early childhood cast a shadow over their lives.


Too Much Happiness
This is a biographical story of Sophia Kovalevsky, a mathematic genius in nineteenth century in Russia. This is the longest story in this book.