Miles City, Montana
By Alice Munro
2023
First Published
3.50
Average Rating
24
Number of Pages
Writer remembers her childhood in Canada. When she was 6 years old, an 8-year-old friend of hers, Steve Gauley, drowned. The funeral was at her house and she felt a sickening disgust towards the adults there. 20 years later, in 1961, she and her husband Andrew took a trip in their new car with their 2 daughters. Cynthia was 6 and Meg was 3 1/2. They drove east across the U.S., from Vancouver, where they lived, to Ontario, where they were from. It seemed to her that they'd invented characters for their children. Cynthia had light skin and hair and was bright and diligent. Meg was darker and more reticent. Writer had contradictory feelings for her husband. He'd once told her, "I know that I'd be better off without you" and "You'd be happier without me." Writer hasn't seen him in years now. She remembers their past and tells about Andrew's and her family. She tells of the rest of their trip to Ontario. When they reached Miles City Montana, they found a swimming pool. Though it was closed for a few hours, the woman in charge let the children swim. Writer and Andrew stayed in the car. When the writer got out she wondered about her children. She saw Cynthia in the pool and asked, "Where's Meg?" Cynthia said "Dis-ap-peared." Writer screamed; Andrew jumped the fence and pulled Meg out of the water. She'd reached for a comb in the pool and fell in the deep end, making such a light splash that nobody heard. Writer wondered what would have happened if Meg drowned, and about Steve Gauley's funeral. For the first time she felt that she understood something about the adults at his funeral. She and Andrew drove on with the 2 in the back trusting them. They trusted themselves to be forgiven for the natural and particular mistakes.
Avg Rating
3.50
Number of Ratings
38
5 STARS
21%
4 STARS
37%
3 STARS
21%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
8%
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Author
Alice Munro
Author · 50 books
Alice Ann Munro, née Laidlaw, is a Canadian short-story writer who is widely considered one of the world's premier fiction writers. Munro is a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction. Her stories focus on human relationships looked at through the lens of daily life. She has thus been referred to as "the Canadian Chekhov." She is the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Arabic: أليس مونرو) (Persian: آلیس مانرو) (Russian Cyrillic: Элис Манро) (Ukrainian Cyrillic: Еліс Манро) (Bulgarian Cyrillic: Алис Мънро) (Slovak: Alice Munroová) (Serbian: Alis Manro)
