'Too Much Happiness' by Alice Munro

A novel I have recently finished reading is ‘Too Much Happiness’ by Alice Munro. The novel is divided into various little stories. The first is about a young wife and mother who is in unbearable pain after having lost her three children. In another, a young woman, impacted by an unusual yet humbling seduction, reacts in a clever fashion. The other stories uncover the problematic issues of a marriage, the traumatic cruelty of children, and how the distorted face of a boy leads him to good yet also bad things in his life.

In the long title story, we escort a late nineteenth-century Russian mathematician and émigré, Sophia Kovalevsky, on a winter journey taking her to Paris, Germany and Denmark, all the way from the Riviera, to visit her lover. In Denmark we accompany her to a decisive meeting with a local doctor, and from then on to Sweden where she goes to the only university existing in Europe at the time, willing to be employed as a female mathematician.

In this novel, Alice Munro delivers difficult events and emotions into stories that focus on the unreliable course in which men and women transcend what happens in their lives. Munro has a particular manner in which she roots her stories in the point of view of an individual character whose reflective tone is initially captivating to the reader. The author creates a connection between the reader and the protagonist, then throughout the action of the story, makes you wish you had withheld what you had thought of her before, due to the judgment you hold for her as the story developes.

Personally, I found this book incredibly beguiling and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about deception and destruction.