num_pages: 352
description: In Alice Munro’s superb new collection, we find stories about women of all ages and circumstances, their lives made palpable by the subtlety and empathy of this incomparable writer.The runaway of the title story is a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband. In "Passion," a country girl emerging into the larger world via a job in a resort hotel discovers in a single moment of stunning insight the limits and lies of that mysterious emotion. Three stories are about a woman named Juliet–in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls’ school into a wild and irresistible love match; in the second she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose life and marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her child, caught, she mistakenly thinks, in the grip of a religious cult, vanishes into an unexplained and profound silence. In the final story, "Powers," a young woman with the ability to read the future sets off a chain of events that involves her husband-to-be and a friend in a lifelong pursuit of what such a gift really means, and who really has it.Throughout this compelling collection, Alice Munro’s understanding of the people about whom she writes makes them as vivid as our own neighbors. Here are the infinite betrayals and surprises of love–between men and women, between friends, between parents and children–that are the stuff of all our lives. It is Alice Munro’s special gift to make these stories as vivid and real as our own.(front flap)Runaway -- Chance -- Soon -- Silence -- Passion -- Trespasses -- Tricks -- Powers.
language: English
title: Runaway
titlecomplete: Runaway
characters: Juliet
genres: Canada, Short Stories, Book Club, Canadian Literature, Nobel Prize, Literary Fiction, Womens, Literature, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 24117
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Scotiabank Giller Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: O. Henry Award
category: 'Passion', awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in Caribbean and Canada, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
publisher: Alfred A. Knopf