Alice Munro is out to get me

On Friday, I was riding the train home. It was dark out (as this pesky daylight standard time brings on all too quickly). I was reading this Alice Munro collection. And I almost missed my stop.

If I go too far past my stop, I end up in the Pacific Ocean. Not good when it's dusk. That's feeding time for sharks.

Fortunately, I realized where I was just in time.

This morning, the same thing almost happened, but on the way in to work. If I miss that stop, I end up in the bay. I think sharks feed at dawn too.

So it's a good book. I finished "Meneseteung" yesterday. I guess Margaret Atwood said that's Munro's best. Despite my feelings about Atwood (after reading just one book), I may agree. First, it's about a poet. How can you not like a short story about a poet? It's also a quietly clever story. That's what I like most about Munro so far. She uses very ordinary lives and very simple stories but she's rather elegantly different. She writes with authority and confidence stories that at first feel like they belong in a first-semester fiction workshop. But where those stories would go awry, hers just get better.

I'll have to be careful on the train.