Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro

First published: 1990

Type of work: Short stories

Form and Content

Friend of My Youth is a collection of ten short stories in which the protagonists examine their own lives and the lives of others in the hope of finding some certainty or, failing that, some new perception. All the stories either are set in Canada, often in Alice Munro’s native Ontario, or involve Canadian characters. In all but one of them, the point of view is that of a woman, and even in “Oranges and Apples,” which is told through the eyes of Murray Ziegler, the central focus of the narrative is Murray’s relationships with his wife and with the friend who threatens their marriage. Since Munro’s interest is in relationships and choices, her plots involve male characters as well as females. Munro clearly feels most comfortable, however, using women as her observers. Perhaps her approach is best summarized at the end of “Hold Me Fast, Don’t Let Me Pass,” when Hazel Curtis makes a tentative statement about what seems to make women happy, then leaves the same question unanswered as far as men are concerned, certain only that “it must be something quite different.”

In a Munro short story, the present is never detached from the past. In fact, most of the stories in this collection involve an examination of the past, which sometimes comes about, as in “Wigtime,” as the result of a chance encounter with an old friend, sometimes, as in “Oh, What Avails” or “Differently,” as a reaction to death, and even, in “Hold Me Fast, Don’t Let Me Pass,” in a journey undertaken for the specific purpose of investigating the past.

Whatever the circumstances, the conclusions reached by Munro’s observers must be called inconclusive. Although at the end of a story a character may have collected additional facts, it is still unclear what those facts mean. While Murray Ziegler chooses to believe that his wife has not been physically unfaithful, he cannot know the extent of her emotional infidelity or the degree to which Victor Sawicky’s seeming friendship was a mere pretense.

In Munro’s most complex stories and her most fascinating, there comes a point when the narrator questions her own account. For example, “Friend of My Youth,” a compelling tale of a love triangle, is admittedly presented as a secondhand account. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of either the first-person narrator or her mother, who evidently spent considerable time relating the story to her daughter. Nevertheless, Munro’s speaker suddenly announces that she may write her own version of the story, in which she will correct her mother’s vision, giving the characters motivations that are quite different from those her mother ascribed to them. Finally, when her mother receives some later information about one of the characters, the narrator abandons fact altogether and launches into a flurry of fictionalizing. In an ending that is typical of the stories in this collection, the reader and the narrator both find themselves free not only to interpret the past but also indeed to invent it.

Context

Alice Munro has always been particularly interested in the women of her own generation, who were reared under a patriarchal system that prescribed their roles and then suddenly found themselves in the midst of a feminist revolution that enabled and even urged them to launch out on their own. In “Meneseteung,” Munro shows her sympathy for the talented women of past eras who, like the woman poet in that story, often had to choose between life and art; in other stories—for example, “Oh, What Avails,” “Differently,” and “Five Points”—she writes about contemporary women who defy convention in order to fulfill their own needs.

Because Munro is uncomfortable with simplistic thinking, however, she cannot view feminism as a panacea for women’s problems. When her characters take advantage of their new sexual freedom, they may find temporary release, but the outcome is, though not guilt, a rueful disappointment. For example, “Five Points” ends with the protagonist’s discovery that adultery can be as dull and demanding as marriage.

Where Munro stands most surely with feminists is in her belief that women are sustained by their relationships with other women. When a friendship fails, as in “Differently,” both women feel a terrible sense of loss; when one is reestablished, as in “Wigtime,” the result is at least a partial happiness. Even though they have competed for the same man, even though they undoubtedly have mixed motivations for remaining together, the Grieves sisters in “Friend of My Youth” are tied to each other.

Like many other contemporary women writers, Munro finds the relationships between mothers and daughters perhaps the most significant of all. Not only do her mothers shape their offspring, as in “Oh, What Avails,” but when they are gone, their daughters feel a unique sense of loss as well. It is more than a sense of obligation that troubles the young woman in “Goodness and Mercy”; her mother is dying, and she does not know how to deal with her death. The tales that mothers tell become a part of every daughter’s inheritance, and thus memory is transmuted into art. In “Friend of My Youth,” when the daughter remembers her mother’s story about the love triangle, more important than what is said is the attempt to hear once more her mother’s voice, to bring her back young and well. However skeptical Munro may be about human beings’ capacity to comprehend their choices or to direct their lives, she is certain that by sharing their experiences, women may find, if not truth, at least some joy in a dark world.

Bibliography

Booklist. LXXXVI, February 1, 1990, p.1049. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Houston, Pam. “A Hopeful Sign: The Making of Metonymic Meaning in Munro’s ‘Meneseteung.’ ” Kenyon Review 14 (Fall, 1992): 79-92. A feminist approach to Munro’s story, arguing that Almeda Roth exemplifies the difference between women’s thought patterns and men’s. The “metonymic” universe may be “frightening,” but it offers unlimited creative possibilities.

Keith, W. J. A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada. Toronto: ECW Press, 1989. A thoughtful overview of Munro’s fiction, pointing out marked changes in subject, theme, and technique in the later works. The author’s comments are clearly applicable to Friend of My Youth.

Library Journal. CXV, March 15, 1990, p.115. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. April 1, 1990, p.4. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Mayberry, Katherine J. “ ‘Every Last thing . . . Everlasting’: Alice Munro and the Limits of Narrative.” Studies in Short Fiction 29 (Fall, 1992): 531-541. Sees the “uneasy relationship between language and experience” as one of Munro’s primary themes. Mayberry argues that in all of her works, including Friend of My Youth, Munro reveals how words themselves modify past experience and thus prevent her narrators from arriving at the truth.

Mukherjee, Bharati. “Hometown Horrors.” The New York Times Book Review, March 18, 1990, 1. A perceptive review by another important fiction writer, focusing on Munro’s re-creation of the provincial Ontario society that she knows best. In Friend of My Youth, Mukherjee sees evidence of a darkening vision. While in earlier stories narrators escaped from their society and triumphed, here they are almost always defeated. Munro’s work “has deepened the channel of realism.”

The Nation. CCL, May 14, 1990, p.678. A review of Friend of My Youth.

The New Republic. CCII, May 14, 1990, p.50. A review of Friend of My Youth.

The New York Review of Books. XXXVII, May 17, 1990, p.38. A review of Friend of My Youth.

The New York Times Book Review. XCV, March 18, 1990, p.1. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Newsweek. CXV, April 2, 1990, p.56. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVII, January 19, 1990, p.94. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Rasporich, Beverly J. Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. A thoroughly researched book, based on all of Munro’s published writings up to Friend of My Youth, as well as on her unpublished papers. Rasporich deals at length with the issue of Munro’s feminism. Includes interviews and a full bibliography.

Salter, Mary Jo. “In Praise of Accidents.” The New Republic 202 (May 14, 1990): 50-53. A discussion of tone, emphasizing Munro’s detachment from her characters and her disillusioned view of human life. Like her characters, Munro attempts “to consider everything simultaneously” in order to create an artistic whole, and she succeeds.

Smythe, Karen E. Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. A psychoanalytically based study tracing the significance of death in Munro’s stories. While Smythe considers The Moons of Jupiter “the epitome of Munrovian elegy,” she devotes several pages to the use of the genre in “Friend of My Youth.”

Time. CXXXVI, July 2, 1990, p.67. A review of Friend of My Youth.

Walbert, Kate. “Munro Doctrine.” The Nation 250 (May 14, 1990): 678-680. Relates the stories in Friend of My Youth to the women’s movement. Aspiring women of Munro’s generation often had to decide whether “to remain silent or to speak out from self-exile.” Though she shows how desperate the struggle for self-identity can be, Munro never suggests that it is not worthwhile.

The Washington Post Book World. XX, March 18, 1990, p.1. A review of Friend of My Youth.