Too Much Happiness

Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers—the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. 

In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky—a late-nineteenth-century Russian émigré and mathematician—on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.

With clarity and ease, Alice Munro once again renders complex, difficult events and emotions into stories that shed light on the unpredictable ways in which men and women accommodate and often transcend what happens in their lives.

Too Much Happiness is a compelling, provocative—even daring—collection.


I find it difficult to review a book of short stories. I would kinda like to review each story individually, especially because each of these stories are so different and not really connected to one another as far as I can tell, but that would probably make my review longer than the book itself, so I'll do what I can as a collection.

Alice Munro is a beautiful, artistic writer, although many of these stories were very anticlimactic. It seemed that if there was going to be a climax in any of these stories, it would always come at the very end, leaving the reader hanging, yet somehow fufilled. It was an interesting experience. I can see why Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

I think the stories in this collection progress from being the most modern setting to being earlier in history with each story. So they are chronological backwards, although many do not give a distinct timeline. (But I may be proven wrong on this point, I didn't come to that conclusion until the last story and I was too lazy to go back and check that this was true. Whatevs) The last story is technically Historical Fiction based on the life of Sophia Kovalevsky, I believe this story could have been an entire novel on it's own, but it would have been really boring. Sophia's life was interesting, but not all that action filled, so the story seemed rushed, but was also one of the anticlimactic ones. Interestingly, this is the only story that Munro mentions in her Acknowledgements. 

This book was another pick by the Young Women's Downtown Book Club in Victoria, and the last few books I have really been wondering why they chose what they did. In this case, I have a feeling Alice Munro was picked because of her recent Nobel Prize, however when compared to other books of hers on Goodreads, Too Much Happiness is one of the lowest rated. Perhaps I have a preference for novels over collections of short stories, but it would have seemed prudent to me to pick something higher rated. If any of the Book Club ladies wants to enlighten me on the reason that this one was chosen, it would be greatly appreciated!! 

Although I haven't read anything else by Munro, I would suggest that if you want to pick up something by her in lieu of her recent Nobel, I would suggest grabbing a different title, odds are it would be better rated than this one.