Darkstroke

Dear Life: Stories

Dear Life: Stories book cover
DL
Fiction Fiction Biography & Memoir Classics Historical Fiction

by Alice Munro, Raymond Verdaguer, Mónica Naranjo Uribe

starstarstarstar_halfstar
3.75 (19.3K ratings)
calendar_today 2012
description 336 pages

Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro, Raymond Verdaguer, Mónica Naranjo Uribe holds a well received rating of 3.75 out of 5, based on 19.3K reader ratings. First published in 2012. The book spans 336 pages.

About Dear Life: Stories

Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these tales about departures and beginnings, accidents and dangers, and outgoings and homecomings both imagined and real, paint a radiant, indelible portrait of how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.Alice Munro's peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but always spacious and timeless stories is once again everywhere apparent in this brilliant new collection. In story after story, she illumines the moment a life is forever altered by a chance encounter or an action not taken, or by a simple twist of fate that turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into a new way of being or thinking. A poet, finding herself in alien territory at her first literary party, is rescued by a seasoned newspaper columnist, and is soon hurtling across the continent, young child in tow, toward a hoped-for but completely unplanned meeting. A young soldier, returning to his fiancée from the Second World War, steps off the train before his stop and onto the farm of another woman, beginning a life on the move. A wealthy young woman having an affair with the married lawyer hired by her father to handle his estate comes up with a surprising way to deal with the blackmailer who finds them out. While most of these stories take place in Munro's home territory - the small Canadian towns around Lake Huron - the characters sometimes venture to the cities, and the book ends with four pieces set in the area where she grew up, and in the time of her own childhood: stories "autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact." A girl who can't sleep imagines night after wakeful night that she kills her beloved younger sister. A mother snatches up her child and runs for dear life when a crazy woman comes into her yard.

Detail Value
Author Alice Munro, Raymond Verdaguer, Mónica Naranjo Uribe
Published 2012
Pages 336
Genres Fiction, Fiction, Biography & Memoir, Classics, Historical Fiction
Average Rating 3.75 / 5.00
Total Ratings 19,278

Reader Ratings & Analysis

Rating Overview

3.8
starstarstarstar_halfstar
19.3K ratings
With a rating of 3.75, Dear Life: Stories is rated below the global average of 4.17. Compared to its genre average of 3.99, it performs below the genre benchmark.

How It Compares

3.75
This Book
3.99
Historical Fiction Average
4.17
Global Average

Frequently Asked Questions

What genre is Dear Life: Stories?

Dear Life: Stories is categorized as Fiction, Fiction, Biography & Memoir, Classics. Its primary genre classification is Historical Fiction.

Is Dear Life: Stories worth reading?

Based on 19.3K reader ratings, Dear Life: Stories has an average score of 3.75 out of 5.00, which is considered "Well Received."

How many pages is Dear Life: Stories?

Dear Life: Stories has 336 pages.

Who wrote Dear Life: Stories?

Dear Life: Stories was written by Alice Munro, Raymond Verdaguer, Mónica Naranjo Uribe. It was first published in 2012.

What is the ISBN for Dear Life: Stories?

The ISBN-13 for Dear Life: Stories is 9780771064870.0.

Data sourced from community book ratings and reviews. Last updated: April 15, 2026