Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
A complex look at human relationships told in deft prose, from a notable author who lived in a town I'm connected to—including some musings of appreciation for the right book at the right time.
Published November 23, 2024



Book: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
Release Date: October 8, 2002
Publisher: Vintage Books
Format: eBook
Source: Library

I've been musing a lot lately about the right book at the right time. I've had an appreciation for the context of a book and the isolation of it: how the right read exists in this combination of memory/recent experiences/personal connections/author context as well as when you try to read it in a vacuum (which is also why WLS expanded.)
Why I Picked This Up
I read Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage because it was on a list of favorite books recommended by a guy I was seeing this fall. I don't normally read direct recommendations right away (I'm more of a mood reader, so will put something on a list then pick it up randomly down the line) but slotted his recs into my list of library holds for my database to spit out at its leisure. I appreciate how reading someone's favorite books can be an indirect, imperfect way of trying to understand and know them better, even when you know it's an incomplete picture. It's not just each favorite book at a time, per se, but also the layers in how they connect—a form of listening, so to speak. Or at the very least, it could at least be a conversation topic between two readers. (And even that could be a little risky—maybe he'd hate me having potentially different thoughts on his faves! Such is the uncertainty of romance.)
I knew of Alice Munro's passing earlier last year, and had a conversation with the man in question about the pros and cons of separating the art from the artist. Upon her death, it surfaced that she was aware of (and in fact, actively suppressed) her husband sexually assaulting her daughters within her household. (You can read about that and come to your own conclusions.) My initial thought was that I wouldn't go out of my way to read something of hers because there are thousands of other books I want to read and always have a dozen reasons to pick up one versus another; the knowledge wouldn't inherently dissuade me now*, but I might choose something else in seeking for filters to use in triaging my reading list.
After finishing it, I also found out that the author Alice Munro lived in Port Hope, Ontario, the small town in Canada I grew up going to every July (and in fact, she lived in the same house as our family friends and neighbors.) I've always hailed Port Hope as being—in addition to one of my favorite places—the town in which the recent IT movies by Stephen King was based, so I thought that was its sole literary connection. Also, she did live with her daughters in the final years of her life so: another layer of intrigue.
Although we're not seeing each other now, I was already midway through the reading list so wanted to complete the books I was reading (as I'm usually reading about seven at a time.) In finishing this one, I developed a newfound appreciation for the role of the right book (or in this case, collection of short stories) at the right time, and how many factors can affect your reading experience, including but not limited to:
- your knowledge of the person who recommended a book to you
- the author's life surrounding the book
- your past & memories
- your recent topics of interest
- your current circumstances
- the (subjective) qualities of the language, story, etc,. itself
Separating the Art from the Artist
Because I was aware of Munro's transgressions before going into the book, it was impossible not to read the collection through the lens of her own personal trauma. The stories deal with the texture of modern human relationships and often have this implied distance/disconnection within them between spouses and lovers.
Topics included what role your partner plays in your life, preferred distance or lack thereof, whether they see you fully and whether you want them to, the right stranger at the right time, the role of luck and timing, how your children affect the dynamic, etc,. etc,. The mortifying ordeal of being known! Several stories featured older women writer narrators (which is never my favorite to see from an author) but of course served as a mirror.
The Writing & Pacing
Munro's writing was lovely and insightful. I didn't notice it much—which is a compliment from me, as I think blending prose into a story seamlessly is an impressive skill. I was most impressed by the complexity of the characters and relationships depicted. I loved a lot of lines that felt really honest and, again, hit at the exact right time for what I've been mulling over lately.
It's been a while since I've engaged with a solid book of short stories, so I was pleasantly surprised that I had a good time with its pacing. It was just enough to get an expansive look at each dynamic, but each of the nine stories cut off at the exact right time to convey a distinctive flavor and theme (which is also how I aim to construct chapters within a novel, by the way.)
Each Story—A Lengthy Analysis, Sorry
And I have so much more I could say! Jesus!
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
The Story Itself: I didn't necessarily love the story as much as others in the collection, but did find it interesting. The writing style was a bit difficult for me to ease into—the furniture selling logistics, especially. The story centers on a woman who is going to travel to see her long-distance lover, with whom she's been exchanging letters and hopes to eventually marry. What she doesn't know is that the letters have been forged by two teenagers, so the lover she's going to see doesn't know her or care for her at all.
Theme & Notes: God, this story felt so cruel. In the end, the woman ends up marrying the man anyway. She shows up, he basically goes "sure, why not" as she's nursing him back to health, and it reflects ironically on the role of luck and timing in fate and ending up together. I used to believe in soulmates, but now largely believe in multiple soulmates and the role of intention in steering you towards who you're meant to be with. Once you've established compatibility, values, etc,. and all that jazz, it is a lot about the luck and the timing and being in the right mental place. At that point, love is choice. So love being choice in this one felt awful because it started from a place of dishonesty and ill will (the kids choosing to prey on the housekeeper's desire for connection), but I guess all's well that ends well?
I did also think to a feature I pointed out in Magnolia Parks that I appreciated recently, which is fiction that highlights everyone operating on limited information, and how you never know how much context someone has at a given time. The main thesis of this story seemed to be similar. There's all that's happening, yes, and then there's every POV impacting how people see it.
Floating Bridge
The Story Itself: This story was my favorite. Something about it struck me. In it, a couple is preparing for the wife to enter hospice for cancer treatment; as she's preparing for death, she and the husband run an errand where she runs into a man who takes her for a drive—and they end up kissing on the floating bridge.
Theme & Notes: I could tell where this was going pretty immediately. I thought the various elements of the story tied together beautifully and sadly. And there were some seriously stunning lines about the existential crisis I often mull over, which is that you can't always correct the idea of you in others' heads; at a certain point, the (mistaken) idea of you is all there is. Loved the nature imagery.
I did think about how we listen better to strangers than people we know, and how we often don't give others the blank slate to constantly introduce themselves to us because we assume we know them enough already. The core longing of this narrator was so clearly about that issue; she felt boxed into a specific identity with her husband and now that she was dying, felt like she needed a secret or some dynamism—which she could only get with the stranger. I hate that cheating is the solution in this book for her, but understood the logic. I think it's really sad that often the partners in Munro's stories didn't feel capable of being known or seen by their spouses and often sought that elsewhere. But I understood why she specifically might have written them that way.
Family Furnishings
The Story Itself: Family Furnishings came off as really bitter. In it, the narrator (a writer) has a strict separation between the version of herself she grew up with and the version of herself she's chosen in adulthood. There's a family friend, Althea, whom she resents for knowing the previous version, and the story tiptoes around this line.
Theme & Notes: Again, I think a clear theme of Munro's work is that we don't give people room to change once we've fixed this idea of them in our heads, and a lot of the negative emotion and vulnerability overflowing from her characters is sort of related to this frustration. There's a fundamental lack of trust in the idea of connection itself, so you understand how these narrators build these very specific rules of engagement with others and prefer to keep them at a distance or sabotage the connection so it doesn't threaten their view of themselves. Solitude is always safer. Get to know new people so then you don't encounter the cognitive dissonance of consolidating multiple aspects of yourself over time, especially those qualities in yourself that you don't like. Etc,. etc,.
I also didn't like how characters seemed to look for ways to exploit each others' vulnerabilities (I'm probably just a kinder person) but Munro did point out that tendency across characters in multiple stories. Hypervigilence, maybe? It does speak to a certain reality so again—I'm very appreciative of the ability of fiction to illuminate and make a specific way of thinking very newly clear to me.
Comfort
The Story Itself: This story hurt the most to read. In it, the character goes home to realize that her husband Lewis, who's been suffering from ALS, has finally made good on his promise to commit suicide. It was pre-planned, as he didn't want to suffer a slow spiral. But then she starts looking for the note. How could he not have left one?
Theme & Notes: This one made me want to cry. Unlike Munro's other characters (with the exception of the husband from the last story), Nina had this scrap of hope that she wouldn't let die. She knew Lewis was a specific way, that she chose him knowing they'd never be close in the way she wanted (and they did sort of circumstantially give up on connecting more—they were both ready to marry, so they got married) but she never stopped hoping she really actually knew him. That he saw her enough to leave the note she secretly needed.
She mirrored him, for example. She saw that he shut down during sex, so she did as well, instead of trying to connect. I see a lot of this sort of dating advice online with people claiming you should always "match [your love interest's] energy," so that felt parallel. The shock was so well-done and awful and true to life: it was one day, like any other, but her life changed. Similarly, I thought about what we know scientifically about regret, like that we tend to regret the things we didn't do more than the ones we did, and we tend to regret lost opportunities to connect.
Another story of specifically choosing a romantic partner that you can specifically keep distant! I can imagine Munro in this story specifically in regards to what her husband did—knowing there's what happened, and then hoping, secretly, at the end, that somehow everything happened differently actually.
Recently, I read about Stoicism largely being the distance between what actually happened / what we wish happened and making peace with what you can control. In this story, you of course can't do a thing about other people's choices. It also reminded me of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion in a good way, which was surprising because I don't love that book.
Nettles
The Story Itself: Another cheating story—this time about a divorced writer reconnecting with her childhood lover.
Theme & Notes: Supposedly, women tend to romanticize future relationships and men tend to romanticize past relationships (according to analysis of the NYT Modern Love column by editors.) Both methods are rooted in a delusional "idea of" someone, which primed my understanding of the collection as a whole once it occurred to me. In this story, the narrator's also sad about distance from her children which makes total context in the awareness of Munro's household (again.)
I was thinking about a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's memoir about old friends being valuable because you can never duplicate the role of time, and the concept makes me very aware of who I feel close to because they've been around for a while, and how I think often as we age, we lose this innocent willingness to invest in someone we had during childhood. It was easier, maybe, to imagine knowing someone forever—and then we end up doing so because we've allowed the time to elapse. But we don't necessarily pour into other people the same way in adulthood, maybe because we're more afraid of loss. Munro also talked about the concept of treating things and connections and sex and all that jazz lightly, which was very relevant to me this year because I have been trying to be a lighter person and properly balance lightness vs. significance.
Post and Beam
The Story Itself: WOW. This one hit me. Damn!
Theme & Notes: I think Munro must have totally disassociated from her romance in order to function based on what we know about her life. This story embodies that to a tee in some very specific ways.
In one scene, the narrator is so viscerally, suddenly angry with Polly, a member of her family, for being vulnerable and pathetic. She's sad and emotional, and the sight fills Lorna with complete rage. How dare you, she thinks. Then later, she is so guilty that she bargains with God in the desperate hopes that Polly hasn't committed suicide. When she comes back to the house and discovers Polly okay, she's both relieved and resentful.
The ending of this story—holy shit. In it, there's no greater punishment than living her current life.
Again, it's so clear to see how Munro's life may have influenced this one. I personally think a lot about prayer and bargaining (and that's a concept I talk a lot about in my novel MOUNTAIN SOUNDS, about how I view prayers as a currency rather than limitless and how that idea of only being allowed to want so much at once—so saving up for what really matters—reverberates throughout my life.) So that was a gorgeous meditation to read. But the ending lines of this are absolutely stunning and so parallel.
You also see her meditation on the continuous self in a way similar to how it appears in Family Furnishings — that in leaving phases of her life behind, the character literally becomes a different person and specifically keeps herself distant from her partner so as to better separate out her life rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance of change. (As someone who has historically been very bad with the vulnerability of change: I get it.) But wow. This story was stunning. I lied; this one might be a favorite too. But it did depress me that the main character just accepts that she is unhappy in her life.
What Is Remembered
The Story Itself: More cheating. On theme! Personally, each relationship dynamic within the collection was different but this specific twist started to lose some of its emphasis.
Theme & Notes: In this one, Munro's character similarly specifically picks a marriage that she knows will make her unhappy because she does not have to confront her own weaknesses within it. So. At this point in the collection, I was also ruminating on how each character saw the person they cheated with—the stranger, the allure, the "ideal person" in their mind better than the one they know—as purely a means to an end. They don't actually see the person wholly, nor do they want to; if they did get to know them better, they'd probably lose interest as soon as they start getting closer because they become startlingly real.
I did love how in this one, she realizes at the end that the man she kissed is not who she thought, and he has his own independent identity. That was refreshing after a certain number of placeholders, and added a layer of discomfort to the story that made you think the character might start to see the light.
It's better to keep chasing the idea of a person rather than a real person, the book says. And it's easy to see why Munro might be wired that way in context. Survival, of course. In the modern era, we can look at it through the lens of paralysis of choice and how that's impacted modern dating culture, how there's always a better option on the horizon simply because you don't know them yet. The glimmer of possibility.
Queenie
The Story Itself: In this story, the main character visits a member of the family who's run off with an older man to elope. Soon, however, cracks in their marriage start to appear, and the narrator observes its possible disintegration with wariness.
Theme & Notes: Excuse the length of this review, but I truly must book club this entire damn book because I have so much I want to dissect in each story. This story highlights the risk she sees in others' relationships (and yes, there is more cheating.) In it is a warning about the so-called perfect marriage, how someone you marry who looks fine on the surface can suddenly turn into a stranger that makes you regret having run off in the first place. (Wonder why.) So it's easier to just shut down and not make yourself vulnerable to that hope and connection in the first place.
Here's perhaps where we see the most true-to-life depiction of Munro's story, probably. The reasoning for why she's been shaped the way she has, relationally. So very insightful.
The Bear Came Over the Mountain
The Story Itself: In this story, the main characters fall in love and all seems well. The wife, however, eventually loses her memory. (It's very The Notebook, in that way.) In her care home, she falls in love with another man, and grieves his absence when he eventually leaves her; the husband is distraught as he rewires his thoughts of his wife, the purpose of their relationship, and the role that mutual memory and intention have on making their love real.
Theme & Notes: This story probably wraps up some of Munro's points pretty beautifully. This idea of someone you love becoming a stranger to you, and cautioning you never to have loved in the first place. This idea of the idea of someone being more appealing (or perhaps safer) than who they actually are. The self-preservation of withdrawing and just moving onto someone else as soon as anything gets vulnerable or messy, because you can only trust yourself. Loved the twist at the end.
Attachment Styles, and the Fundamental Danger of Connecting
Recently, I went down a rabbit hole about attachment styles because I have historically been "emotionally unavailable" or avoidant. This year, I did a lot of work on my own hyperindependence (the thought of swiping through an app makes me absolutely miserable tho) and felt like I'd gotten myself to a place of secure attachment.
Long story short, I see a lot of those fears re: connection in Munro's work. Her overall pattern seems to be that of creating distance between partners and spouses to avoid genuine vulnerability. In her stories, it's safer and better to connect with strangers (who listen to you better than those you know—proven by science), cut off those who knew a previous version of you that doesn't align with your current one, maintain strict boundaries of the self versus others, etc,. etc,. When her characters are vulnerable, they are either betrayed or become unfamiliar to themselves. They can't trust their connections, so they don't try to.
I know a lot of my own thoughts on self-autonomy vs. attachment to others are formed by the unique frustration of being a twin—being extra-sensitive to any perceived loss of identity or boundaries; I do start to shut down as soon as I feel myself begin to rely on, trust, or get "too close" to anyone because I start to feel diluted by not being entirely self-reliant. A lot of my identity is built around being capable and independent, which sort of endangers any desire. And tragically, I looove my own company and know how to sit with loneliness when it does appear.
I'm not particularly happy with the results of romantic vulnerability at this exact moment in time, but I'm still glad I've done the work to get to where I am now. It's easy to see how Munro's characters (and by default, Munro herself) adapted to this style of complete and utter distance as a survival mechanism, and how some compassion could have gone a long way in helping her (and her characters) feel safe connecting. I think the fundamental point of isolation in this work is so sad. Sure, I'm not always great at the execution, but I still believe in connection as being a net-positive even though I find it destabilizing.
(Although I can tell you right now that I could quite literally never do what she did. I would always put keeping my kids safe first, even if it cost me the security of my spouse and self-image. I am sympathetic to the struggles she encountered and the cognitive dissonance that likely sparked for her, but that's a non-negotiable for me.)
I can also get pretty meta about it and appreciate the role of writing itself as an activity for Munro, assuming this psychological framework. Even writing a book helps me process events and emotions in indirect ways, so I have a fresh awareness of how writing these stories might have functioned in Munro's life to coax these realizations from her, unconsciously or not. (Attachment styles are largely unconscious anyway.)
Again, it's impossible not to view this collection and philosophy through the lens of Munro's tumultuous household. It was a unique layer to my reading experience, for better or worse.
Personally, I Felt a Lot While Reading. Ouch!
This collection surfaced a lot of emotion for me. Like I said, any book you read will play off recent experiences and recent curiosities. It's impossible not to think of the collection in the context of who recommended it to me and how I'm feeling about that—to wonder which lines and sentiments they connected to and what struck them. (Of course I want to book club about it, a realization which hurts.) It would be easy to go in the Munro direction and want to shut down / isolate / distance myself / write off everyone for the sake of not ever feeling vulnerable again, but I'm resisting!
But like I said, the right read at the right time can be frankly magical. It's probably the exact, most clarifying read I could have read at this point in time to encounter a specific mix of acceptance/sadness/potential/faith—a very mixed bag that boils down to the role of connection and of choice in determining the texture of our lives: whether you want to know someone, and whether you want your knowledge of them to last. Whether you can handle the idea of them shifting or whether you need them to stay static in your mind and memory.
There's the way things are, and then there's the story you tell yourself about it, never knowing whether it's fully in the past or will appear again in some other way. Like, for Munro, as a layer of someone reading your work (with their own unique lens too.)
Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but the collection did make me sad because it is a core belief of mine that everyone deserves loved ones (regardless of context—platonically, romantically, on a family level, whatever) who make them feel safe and seen and supported and autonomous no matter what iteration of themselves they might be at a given time. Munro's characters just give up on connection entirely, and don't let their "loved" ones change either; their ideas of each other are fixed and impassible. Of course, they feel both suffocated and lonely.
Personally, I feel like part of loving someone means allowing them to change, and allowing them to continually choose you. Trust is obviously the biggest aspect of that, and Munro's characters never trust each other without consequences. The collection reads as a warning in some ways. There are many factors we can't control and many that we do, but I do think love at a certain point means constant choice.
Thanks, literature, for being a prism. I'm always grateful for a work that expands my way of seeing. I'll have to share my favorite lines and quotes in another post because I genuinely highlighted the entire book. There are some seriously gorgeous passages in here.
OVERALL
Like I said, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is the right read at the right time for me. I'd be curious to read it in a few years and see what's happening in my life and how I might react to it differently. Ouch. Fuck. Excuse my language, but this was absolutely fucking brutal to read right now. But possibly good.
For fans of:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver; The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks; On Love by Alain de Botton; The Path of Most Resistance by Russell Wangersky; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion; You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy; The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk.
*My line tends to be considering who would benefit financially from the book or piece of art. On one hand, it's so impossible for most (deserving, moral) artists to get their foot in the door, so if I can support someone's life who aligns with my morals, I'd infinitely prefer to. But in this case, Munro's children benefit from her estate, so I'm happy to have the sale go to them because I think it's pretty awful she put her comfort over her children's. Just my personal line in deciding what, out of the infinite media available to us, I'll most consciously devote my attention to! But you cannot possibly know, keep up with, and judge everything.