#37 Chance- Alice Munro

#37 Chance- Alice Munro

Juliet is an anachronism, an oddity, a young smart woman looking for a comfortable place in the world.  She studied the Classics, Greek Mythology and dead languages, all choices that are steeped in “irrelevance and dreariness.” 

“In the town where she grew up her sort of intelligence was often put in the same category as a limp or an extra thumb.” Her experience so far in the world is only those she found in books. Her fantasies of men are that of old tales or the works Shakespeare.  Even her name is the very symbol of the quintessential young lover, which she is destined to become.

She attempts to overcome her oddities by accepting the mundane and trying to have normal college experiences and asserts to her family “I am extremely ok.” 

Her real life experiences consist of a 6 month teaching job and a cross country train ride where she clumsily finds a older man, that she doesn’t find too physically attractive, to become her hopeful lover.  Besides a nice conversation about constellations, I found it hard to follow the attraction.  That she pursued this married man actually made me disappointed and a little sad for Juliet.

Two stories in to his collection and there seems to be a common element of woman settling for less than their worth.  “Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find a woman glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.”

This was incredibly beautiful writing, although the end was a little abrupt and felt like an unfinished story.

Notable Passage: “The book slipped out of her hands, her eyes closed, and she was now walking with some children (students?) on the surface of a lake. Everywhere each of them stepped there appeared a five-sided crack, all of these beautifully even, so that the ice became like a tiled floor. The children asked her the name of these ice tiles, and she answered with confidence, iambic pentameter. But they laughed and with this laughter, the cracks widened. She realized her mistake then and knew that only the right word would save the situation, but she could not grasp it.”

Rating: 9-8-7-7 Total= 31