Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
by Alice Munro (1974)
Vintage (2004)
246 pp
If you’ve been following along, you know that Betsy and I just finished reading and posting on Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. Without delay, it is time we got started with Munro’s third book, Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974).
We will soon be posting our thoughts on the first story, and I wanted to get this anchor post set up so that any of you who are interested in joining us can get the book and get started.
This is the anchor post, an index with links to our posts on each story in this collection.
Now that we’ve completed another Munro book, I wanted to again say how happy I am to be doing this Munro-completion project. Together, Betsy and I compiled just over 30,000 words on this book, covering a variety of topics, usually from different, sometimes contradictory, angles.
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You contains the following thirteen stories:
I am looking forward to this next step. But it is difficult to part from Del.
For anyone who was a girl before the 1960’s, Del’s feistiness and determination are a welcome antidote to those years when there were so many things a girl was not supposed to do or be.
It is also hard to part from Addie. I found in her a familiar. She was all too human (which is all too familiar). At the same time, however, her determination to assume the role of thinker had my attention, when, with no credentials, no position, and no clique, what in the world gave her the idea that thinking was something she had a right to do?
Unraveling the quiet, thoughtful adult Del from her younger obstreperous selves also gave me a lot of reading pleasure.
Finally, I enjoyed the company of the writer (Munro) in her thirties. For a book whose intended audience was adults, to have chosen a child as her hero made Munro a writer who was surely flying in the dark. But I wouldn’t say she was flying without instruments – she did have her own memories, daughters, and her powers of observation as a guide. But Munro seems as brave as Del in this reckless choice. After all, this was a time when no one thought women were supposed to be anything.
Moving on to book 3 is bittersweet. I expect many more pleasures, but I will miss Addie and Del.
I will miss Del (and Addie), too, Betsy. And yet — onward we go :-) .
Okay — we’ve finished another Munro! I’ve put a paragraph in the above paragraph to boast about our accomplishment :-) .
I have to say that, while I loved this collection, I do not think it is as strong as the best in Munro’s debut, Dance of the Happy Shades, and I don’t think it even comes close to approaching Lives of Girls of Women. But it’s a strong book, particularly as Munro traces her own transitions with this transitionary book.
On to The Beggar Maid!