Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories

by Alice Munro | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0075497174 Global Overview for this book
Registered by gypsysmom of Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada on 6/7/2008
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This book is in the wild! This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by gypsysmom from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada on Saturday, June 7, 2008
I bought this book at a second hand bookstore in Charlottetown PEI. They were about to move so they had marked down lots of books. I got this one and another Alice Munro and a Tony Hillerman Hardcover for $1.

Journal Entry 2 by gypsysmom from Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada on Sunday, June 14, 2009
This was Munro's first published work and it won the Governor-General's Award for fiction in 1968. I think it is fair to say that many of the stories are autobiographical, remembering her early years in Wingham Ontario. She speaks for all of the misfit girls, those girls who don't quite fit in with the other kids at school or even their own family. Having been one of those girls I could relate.

The story "Red Dress - 1946" is about a girl who goes to the high school dance and fears she is never going to be asked for a dance. She almost leaves with another girl but, at the last moment, she is asked to dance. At the end of the night the boy walks her home and kisses her. Then he turned back to town, never knowing he had been my rescuer, that he had brought me from Mary Fortune's territory into the ordinary world. I'm sure that same story could have been written about 1966 or 1986 or 2006.

In "Boys and Girls" the daughter of a fox farmer lets a horse out of the pasture when her father was about to kill it. When her little brother tells their father what she did, the father dismisses it by saying "She's only a girl." Munro's father was a fox and poultry farmer and I'm sure Alice was taught early on that there was no room for sentiment on a farm. As I did, I'm sure she rebelled against that but felt like she didn't really belong to the family.

I think the clearest passage about the feeling of being a misfit is this one found on page 75:
...the difficulties I got into were a faithful expression of my own incommodious nature--the same nature that caused my mother to look at me on any occasion which traditionally calls for feelings of pride and maternal accomplishment (my departure for my first formal dance, I mean, or my hellbent preparations for a descent on college) with an expression of brooding and fascinated despair, as if she could not possibly expect, did not ask, that it should go with me as it did with other girls; the dreamed-of spoils of daughters--orchids, nice boys, diamond rings--would be borne home in due course by the daughters of her friends, but not by me; all she could do was hope for a lesser rather than a greater disaster--an elopement, say, with a boy who could never earn his living, rather than an abduction into the White Slave trade.

On behalf of all the other females of the world who have worried that they will never belong, I want to say thanks to Alice Munro. Thanks for showing us that we're not alone.

I will be releasing this book during the 2009 Canada Day release challenge which starts on June 20, 2009 and ends on July 1.

Journal Entry 3 by gypsysmom at Whirlpool Lake in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba Canada on Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (6/30/2009 UTC) at Whirlpool Lake in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba Canada

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book in the box that holds the self-registration forms for the campground. This release is for the 2009 Canada Day release challenge and also for the 52 towns in 52 weeks challenge (McCreary is the nearest town).

Journal Entry 4 by christine-york at Yorkton, Saskatchewan Canada on Saturday, January 5, 2013
Overall i really liked the book. There were only a couple of stories i just couldn't get into reading. But i wouldn't have bought a book of that content anyway. O live in yorkton, sk now, but i was born and spent the first 14 years of my life in richmond hill, ontario. I really enjoyed reading about small towns in ontario.

Journal Entry 5 by christine-york at Yorkton, Saskatchewan Canada on Saturday, January 5, 2013
Overall i really liked the book. There were only a couple of stories i just couldn't get into reading. But i wouldn't have bought a book of that content anyway. O live in yorkton, sk now, but i was born and spent the first 14 years of my life in richmond hill, ontario. I really enjoyed reading about small towns in ontario.

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