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Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories Paperback – August 11, 1998

by Alice Munro (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 320 ratings
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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013

In these fifteen short stories--her eighth collection of short stories in a long and distinguished career--Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.

"Virtuosity, elemental command, incisive like a diamond, remarkable: all these descriptions fit Alice Munro."--Christian Science Monitor

"How does one know when one is in the grip of art--of a major talent?....It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro's stories."--Wall Street Journal
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    August 11, 1998
  5. Dimensions
    5.23 x 0.63 x 7.99 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    067978151X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679781516
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise from fellow writers:

“Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does.” —Jhumpa Lahiri

“She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion.” —Jonathan Franzen

“The authority she brings to the page is just lovely.” —Elizabeth Strout

“She’s the most savage writer I’ve ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive.” —Jeffery Eugenides

“Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.”—Julian Barnes

“She is a short-story writer who…reimagined what a story can do.” —Lorrie Moore

“There’s probably no one alive who’s better at the craft of the short story.” —Jim Shepard

“A true master of the form.” —Salman Rushdie

“A wonderful writer.” —Joyce Carol Oates

From the Inside Flap

In these fifteen short stories--her eighth collection of short stories in a long and distinguished career--Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives.

"Virtuosity, elemental command, incisive like a diamond, remarkable: all these descriptions fit Alice Munro."--Christian Science Monitor

"How does one know when one is in the grip of art--of a major talent?....It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro's stories."--Wall Street Journal

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Vintage Contemporaries edition (August 11, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 067978151X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679781516
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.23 x 0.63 x 7.99 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 320 ratings

About the author

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Alice Munro

Alice Munro

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Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven previous books.During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the W.H. Smith Prize, the National Book Circle Critics Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Lannan Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Rea Award for the Short Story. In Canada, she has won the Governor General's Award, the Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Libris Award.Alice Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton, Ontario, and Comox, British Columbia.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
320 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Richard Seltzer
5.0 out of 5 stars Binge-reading Alice Munro
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2022
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I'm binge-reading Allice Munro's works. One story after another is delightful, but I'm having troubling distinguishing one from another. The same tone. The same rhythm. Extraordinary three-dimensional characters that hold my interest and empathy, but I can't tell one from another, can't remember their names. These people are like classmates of mine from elementary school -- I can see them in my mind's eye, but I forget far more than I remember. Maybe I need to reread these stories, maybe read them more than twice.

I love the way she describes scenes, people, and situations. Here are a few samples:
"the street is shaded, in some place, by maple tree whose root have cracked and heaved the sidewalk and spread out ike crocodiles into the bare yards. p. 1

"And Mary found herself exploring her neighbour's life as she had once explored the lives of grandmothers and aunts -- b pretending to know less than she did, asking for some story she had heard before; this way, remembered episodes emerged each time with slight differences of content, meaning, colour, yet with a pure reality that usually attaches to things which are at least part legend. p. 19

"... I pictured the current as something separate from the water, just as the wind was separate from the air and had its own invading shape. p. 37

"The tree trunks had rings around them, a curious dark space like the warmth you make with your breath." p. 39

"They were like children in a medieval painting, they were like small figures carved of wood, for worship or magic, with faces smooth and aged, and meekly, cryptically uncommunicative." p.101

"But we grew cunning, unfailing in cold solicitude; we took away from her our anger and impatience a disgust, took all emotion away from our dealings with her, as you might take away meat from a prisoner to weaken him, till he died." p. 199
2 people found this helpful
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Paula Sullivan
4.0 out of 5 stars Some Real Gems
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2017
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Allice Munro is a highly skilled, acclaimed short story writer. Some of her stories are little gems and overall the book, which I believe was her first, is a good read. The people about whom she writes, however, are on a fairly narrow stage of Canada and it seemed to constrict my ability to get into their lives and characters.
One person found this helpful
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W. Laine
5.0 out of 5 stars Nobel Prize Winner's First Book Is an Accomplished Work
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2013
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The stories range from good to excellent with good descriptive detail & perceptive observations about human behavior. They are set mostly in rural or small-town Canada from the 1930s to the 1950s, usually in Southeastern Ontario near Lake Huron. The point of view is usually a girl's or woman's. In one story, a girl learns that being a girl requires certain standards for her to meet. In another, a girl accompanying her father meets someone from his past & realizes that she knows very little about the lives of her parents before she was born. In a story from a boy's point of view, he makes love with a girl to whom it seems a mystical experience. Afterward, she seems remote from the sense of union he felt he had experienced with her. The story's title is "Thanks for the Ride." In the final story, "The Dance of the Happy Shades," a seemingly obsolete & ineffectual old piano teacher turns out to have been underestimated by the community.
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Deerpath
5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Christmas Gift
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2013
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"Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories" is Alice Munro's first book of short stories published in the year 1968, and it established her as a top writer. She is one of the major voices of Canada, especially with her focus on the communities and farms of southwestern Ontario. With her regional study in her fiction, she reaches out to express all human life in all space and in all time. She definitely deserved the honour of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2013. From her book "Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories," I have taught her short story "Boys and Girls" at least ten times. My students and I have dearly loved this story about the growth in awareness of the girl narrator. I have also read the other stories in the volume, and particularly like her short story "Thanks for the Ride." It mirrors young people's lives from the ages of sixteen to twenty so very well. I gave "Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories" to my nephew, who is eighteen years old and a freshman at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, U.S.A., for a Christmas gift this year 2013. I know that he will really enjoy reading this first book by Alice Munro, this year's Nobel Laureate. Thank you for shipping it to my nephew, now in Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.A. It arrived in perfect condition. I am so very glad to give him this book for Chistmas.
5 people found this helpful
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Claude
5.0 out of 5 stars Truth is Beauty
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2013
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When I first read Alice Munro's short stories, years ago, it was not love at first sight. Her unblinking look at life, much as it was expressed through a gorgeous style and plots like clever miniature mechanisms, disconcerted me somewhat. At that time, I liked my reality with a little more sweetener. I am glad that I have reached a point in my life when I can fully appreciate her art. It's simply gorgeous and, after all, Truth is Beauty, isn't it?
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scott
3.0 out of 5 stars Some great stories, some were "ok" but there were about ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2016
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Some great stories, some were "ok" but there were about three I really enjoyed. Worth the read. I went on line after to checkout what other readers had to say about the stories so I didn't miss anything.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars very good reading . I enjoyed it.
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2015
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The stories are old fashioned and,as I am older, I find that very refreshing. It is a good way to pass a summer dat, poignant and satifyingly not quite finished.
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Fred O
5.0 out of 5 stars Hail Munro
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2016
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Why anyone would say Munro's writing is ordinary and boring is beyond me. Sure it sometimes seems as though nothing happens but still she has a masterful way of saying so much without saying anything at all, and isn't that what great writing is all about, and to think as far back as this first collection she'd somewhat figured out what kind of writer she wanted to be, is truly beyond me, and even if you (and me) don't get what she's talking about sometimes, please don't hate, it's pointless
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Top reviews from other countries

WhatCathyReadNext
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, perceptive, atmospheric short stories from a master of the format
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2017
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This is the second collection of short stories by Alice Munro I’ve read. The first, Runaway, I described as ‘bleak’. But having read this collection, which was actually the first she ever published, I think I was too harsh. Instead, I think I should have said ‘unflinching in her observation’. I’m going to pick out three stories that I think illustrate both Munro’s gift for observation and her ability to reveal the petty snobberies of small town life.

In ‘Walker Brothers Cowboy’, Munro brilliantly conjures up the atmosphere of the small town where the narrator lives.

‘Then my father and I walk gradually down a long shabby, sort of street, with Silverwoods Ice Cream signs standing on the sidewalk, outside tiny, lighted stores…The street is shaded, in some places, by maple trees whose roots have cracked and heaved the sidewalk and spread out like crocodiles into the bare yards. People are sitting out, men in shirt-sleeves and undershirts and women in aprons – not people we know but if anybody looks ready to nod and say, “Warm night”, my father will nod too and say something the same.’

In ‘Shining Houses’, the residents of a new estate of ‘new, white and shining houses’ unite against the occupant of an old house who they believe is bringing down the value of their homes. Munro describes how the male residents of the new houses work on their properties at the weekends.

‘They worked with competitive violence and energy, all this being new to them; they were not men who made their livings by physical work. All day Saturday and Sunday they worked like this, so that in a year or two there should be green terraces, rock walls, shapely flower beds and ornamental shrubs.’

Don’t you just love that phrase ‘competitive violence’ to describe the sort of one-upmanship of neighbours?

In ‘Time of Death’, a tragic accident causes the other women of the community to rally round to support, Leona, the grieving mother.

‘Leona drew up her knees under the quilt and rocked herself back and forth as she wept, and threw her head down and then back (showing, as some of them noticed with a feeling of shame, the dirty lines on her neck).’

That detail of the woman’s dirty neck is what I meant by the unflinching nature of Munro’s observation. And, there is a further sting in the tail because it becomes clear their support is only temporary for a woman they consider of a lower class.

‘In the dark overheated kitchen the women felt the dignity of this sorrow in their maternal flesh, they were humble before this unwashed, unliked and desolate Leona.’

I really enjoyed these stories with their acute observation, dark humour and brilliant evocation of time and place. I hope if I’d read them when they were first published I’d have been adept enough to recognise Alice Munro as the huge literary talent she has since become.
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Deborah
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every word
Reviewed in France on November 6, 2016
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I hadn't read any Munro before this collection of stories and hadn't read short fiction in a long while and had therefore forgotten just how enjoyable it is. Not a word is superfluous. Not a word is innocent. Every story is a palimpsest and can be read and re-read over and over. I am now a fan. Munro is the business!
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avidreader52
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and familiar!
Reviewed in Brazil on June 15, 2015
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That is how a feel about Dance of the Happy Shades: amazed and at the same time acknowledging those stories as familiar, things we have lived ourselves or have known on oyher people close to us. Universal.
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Carol
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on May 23, 2015
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probably the best of Munro's works that I've read, each story unique and entrancing
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Evelyn
5.0 out of 5 stars The ordinary stories, the import meanings
Reviewed in Germany on September 6, 2014
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I decided to buy books by Alice Munro, when I read a Chinese article mentioning about how great her stories are. Honestly speaking, as I started to read the first story, I got quite disappointed. The stories seem so far away from our daily life. I used to read stories quite familiar to me like those by Jojo Moyes. Munro's storeis, as stated by Sunday Times 'are about the farms and semi-rural towns, dealing with the joys and pains of love and the despair and guilt of those caught in a narrow existence'. 'Walker Brothers Cowboy', 'The Shining Houses' and 'Images' are all about the old-age farmland, which is quite difficult for the modern people to catch the scene and to understand its meaning, above all, the kind of languages she used to write is more like a farmers talking slans.

Nevertheless, I finished reading the first story of hers despite the kind of language she used. It made me starte to think and to think over. The whole story seems then make sense. It is like a tedious story but meaningful. It describes how life changes a man's as well as a woman's life. How grownups try their bests to support the family and to lead a life of their own.

As Munro wrote mostly only short stores, those stores are good for bed time, mentioned by others. I took the book to my bedroom. 'The shining houses', the second story, seems just a description of how people in a small village dealing with strange neighbors. However in the end it shows how the narrator does care about the life of her neighbors. The life is not just about themselves, the life is also about the wish of the neighbors. Sadly some of them only cares about their own. Munro didn't give us this lesson, but reading her story, we do get that.

With thoese hidling meanings, I started to like reading her stories. The 'Images' tells us how a sick person lives his life. 'Thanks for the ride' shows how a poor girl desperate for a decent friendship and respect. 'The office', how a woman dealing with discrimination in the search of her own career; 'An Ounce of Cure', how a little gir get over her first heartbreak with love from her parents and her friends during her over drinkign; 'The time of death', how a family deals with the lost of beloved baby and how a girl changes her life with unfairness. 'Days of the Butterfly' - how school children get along with each other with different family backgrounds. 'Boys and Girls' - How boys and girls are raised in a traditional family and how they actually turn up to be with two vivid personality in a typical family life. 'Postcard', a first-person experience tells the real popular drama all over the world.

Till now I couldn't stop reading her stores. Thanks God, I still have three of them in one order for me to read through. Most of us don't give second thought of our daily life. All of us want something big, something important. We watch the movie with the unique stories. We read news with something unexpected. We chase things we don't see or we don't encounter every day. Alice Munro, she wrote the daily stories happen every minute around us, but with deep meanings. Thanks those stories by Munro, we take the time to think over.
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