Munro stories collect tragedy and hope

Last week I finished reading the third book of the year (Resolution No. 1.) It was not one of the many books piled in a box in my room from birthdays and Christmas, but a book I picked out somewhat on a whim.

I always read the book reviews in magazines and try to keep in mind the ones that sound interesting - but usually I forget them all by the time I get to the library or a bookstore. There was one review that stuck with me, however, a review of short stories by Alice Munro, "Too Much Happiness." There was a line taken from one of the stories that struck me enough to make me want to read the book.

A few weeks later I was at Barnes and Noble with an ample supply of gift cards and I happened across the book. Unlike a novel, the short stories sort of fit into my schedule the way a magazine would - I could read one story a night the way I read one article a night. There was no desire to stay up way past my normal bedtime to find out what would happen next. And with a mix of short stories, there is always a chance that if one story is not so great, the next one might be good. With a novel, if it's bad at the beginning, it's probably bad all the way through.

Though the stories in Munro's latest collection are unrelated, they do have some common themes. Most of the stories are told from the point of view of women, and several of them are women who've made it to late life without having children. There is something of a dreary outlook on relationships to the collection.

My two favorites in the book are the first story and the last. I liked the stories because they are the most different from the rest of the pieces in the book. The first is about a young woman who is travelling on a bus to visit someone who is in an institution of sorts. Long before much is revealed I guessed what had happened to the woman's family. But it is told in such a way that I could feel the young woman's pain as she struggled to come to turns with the worst tragedy of her life and move on.

The last story is the one that made me want to buy the book. It is the longest piece in the book, and the most moving one. It is about a woman who settles for a marriage of convenience so that she can study mathematics in an era and in a country where women are not encouraged to do much beyond raise a family. Then when she is older, she settles for a man who isn't really interested in a commitment. She accepts a lot less than she really wants from him. And she rethinks every moment she has with him, trying to find any sign that he might want more.

A friend reminds her to "Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind. When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her."

It is such a succinct reminder of how two people can experience the same moment in such different ways.

A lot of the stories in the book are a little heartbreaking - and in taking a break from reading "The New Yorker," I was disappointed to see that several of the stories were ones I'd already read in recent years in "The New Yorker." But there are some pieces where a little ray of hope shines through in the most unusual of circumstances.