Other famous stories are as intricately designed as Munro’s-James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” for example.

Her stories will endure for a number of reasons, but especially because she willingly constructs a “house” that always reveals more with each visit. Her famous story-as-house metaphor is aptly realized in her fiction, especially in stories published after her conscious decision to abandon the epiphanic shape of stories in her first book, Dance of the Happy Shades. Munro has written many such stories in the last five decades. Like many readers, I am always grateful to come upon the kind of story Alice Munro calls “durable and freestanding,” one that forever alters my experience as a reader. Alice Munro, from the introduction to her Selected Stories To deliver a story like that, durable and freestanding, is what I’m always hoping for.” It also has a sturdy sense of itself, of being built of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. You go inside and stay A story is not like a road to follow, I said, it’s more like a house. “A story is not like a road to follow, I said, it’s more like a house.

Today’s blog post comes from writer Andrew Scott. We’ve asked a diverse group of readers and writers to participate by sharing a short story that demands to be read. During the month of May, The Missouri Review will highlight a single short story to help celebrate National Short Story Month.

Alice munro selected stories review