Giving the gift of Letters
- Published: 17 Dec 2012 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: Life
Books are gifts that last. The joy of giving and the pleasure of reading are wrapped neatly into one during this festive season as the Bangkok Post's reporters and editors recommend books to suit a wide range of tastes and passions. From pictorial tomes to moving fiction and practical manuals, plus delectable cookbooks and even theoretical studies on fashion writing, no presents are more worth unwrapping than fine new books.
Dear Life
By Alice Munro
Knopf, 2012
Beautiful, as ever. In her latest book, Alice Munro continues to make life, dear life, so authentic and heart-melting, with every quiver of emotion seeping through her prose like tears, or like blood. This is a book to give to the woman you love _ mother, wife, girlfriend, lover, ex _ because it's the least you can do (if you're a man, and if you're not, just give it anyway) to show how you try to get in touch with that elastic fibre of womanhood. Dear Life consists of 14 short stories, mostly set after WWII in rural Ontario, where Munro grew up, and most telling tales of women at a time when being a woman seems slightly harder than it is now. From a story of fleeting romance, to a memory of childhood insomnia, and a final section that is the writer's "emotional autobiography", Dear Life isn't just a tender fiction of disparate female characters. It's also tough, wry, and real.
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