Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - Alice Munro

Floating Bridge is also a typical Alice Munro story, but different. Forty-two-year-old Jinny is fighting cancer, and the front room in their middle-class home is turned into a sickroom. Her husband hires a girl to look after her, and they visit the girls trailer park relatives. Class tensions are exposed ( You know youll hurt their feelings, he whispered. Theyre trying to be nice to you. ), and then something both unbelievable and totally believable happens to conclude the story in a way the reader will never forget.

Other stories contain lines that change the world. A promisingly flirtatious reunion with a teenage sweetheart, now married, takes an unexpected turn. ( About our youngest boy, he said. Our youngest boy was killed last summer. Oh. He was run over, he said. I was the one who ran over him. Backing out of our driveway. I stopped again. He stopped with me. Both of us stared ahead. His name was Brian. He was three. )

In this great book by one of the worlds great writers, the settings may be Vancouver Island, small-town Ontario, Toronto, or Vancouver, but the stories are universal, and the characters
no, the people in the stories
are unforgettable.