BooksCanadian

Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro

Alice Munro's first collection of short stories

CBC Books Posted: Feb 15, 2017 8:28 AM EST | Last Updated: May 14

In the stories that make up Dance of the Happy Shades, the deceptive calm of small-town life is brought memorably to the page, revealing the countryside of Southwestern Ontario to be home to as many small sufferings and unanticipated emotions as any place.

This is the book that earned Alice Munro a devoted readership and established her as one of Canada's most beloved writers. Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1968, Dance of the Happy Shades is Munro's first short story collection. (From Penguin Canada)

Alice Munro, Canadian author who mastered the short story, dead at 92

Literary legend Alice Munro died on May 13, 2024 at the age of 92. The Canadian writer is revered worldwide as a master of the short story, with 14 acclaimed collections and a Nobel Prize the 13th woman and second Canadian, after Saul Bellows, to ever receive that honour.

Munro's work has won twoScotiabankGiller Prizes, three Governor General's Literary Awards and the Man Booker International Prize. Her first book,Dance of the Happy Shades, was released in 1968, and she continued to write stories, often contributing to The New Yorker, until retiring in 2013. In books likeLives of Girls and Women,The Love of a Good WomanandRunaway, Munro captured the inner lives of men and women in rural Canada. Her work is inspired by her own upbringing inWingham, Ont.

Read an excerpt | Author interviews | More about this book

From the book

Here they found themselves year after year a group of busy, youngish women who had eased their cars impatiently through the archaic streets of Rosedale, who had complained for a week previously about the time lost, the fuss over the children's dresses, and, above all, the boredom, but who were drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles's living room.

From Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro 1968. Published by Penguin Random House Canada.

Author interviews

From the archives: Alice Munro

11 years ago

2:16

Rex Murphy profiled the Nobel Prize for Literature winner back in 1990.

Art of the short story

11 years ago

3:27

If Nobel Prize winning author Alice Munro mastered the contemporary short story, what can new writers do with the form?

Writers and Company52:46Alice Munro on Runaway

A rare conversation with Canadas first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In this interview from 2004, Eleanor speaks with Munro about her Giller Prize-winning collection of short stories, Runaway.

Archives24:17Alice Munro on 'Morningside'

Author Alice Munro reads from her story The Ottawa Valley and talks about her style as a writer.Credit: Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro, Penguin Canada.

More about this book

5 coolest things Alice Munro told CBC about her writing

8 years ago

2:04

Over the years, Alice Munro was interviewed by the CBC many times. Here are some memorable moments.

Alice Munro amazed by Nobel win

11 years ago

2:14

'Not under any illusion that it was the only good book around'