Below is a summation of the members' reactions to this work.
Dear Life is a collection of stories by Alice Munro, one of Canada's most distinguished authors who has won global recognition for her writing, including the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her collective works, and Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, which she has won three times. She received the Writers' Trust of Canada's Marian Engel Award in 1996 and in 2004 was awarded the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway.
Discussion began with the question, "Which story did you like best or consider the most memorable?" At that point the group discovered only two members had read the entire book and one member had not read it at all. Everyone agreed that the first story was difficult to get into and most had stopped reading before finishing it. But a few members had read at least one story all the way through which allowed the group to have a long and lively discussion over several of the various characters and recurring themes. The facilitator led the group through a brief recap of several stories, reading short excerpts and asking questions based on the readings.
This particular meeting underscores one of the main attractions of book groups: members do not have to like, or in this case even have read the entire selection, in order to have a meaningful discussion. All were able to contribute something meaningful to the discussion. Everyone came away having learned about a significant literary author as well as having acquired some knowledge of her work.
