Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

Alice Munro’s short story collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage explores the complex, interconnected relationships between individuals as they experience the highs and lows of life’s transitions. While not following a single overall plot, this emotional collection delves into themes of power, gender roles, and the importance of communication in its tales of characters finding themselves or each other.

The title story of this collection begins with a strange kind of courtship. Janice, a postal worker, finds herself inadvertently conveying a young man’s messages of admiration to the girl he’s crushing on. Ambiguity tugs at the end of the story, leaving one to wonder if the girl ever actually got the message.

An intriguing tale is told in “Postcard” which follows an elderly woman as she sorts through old postcards. Letters from her deceased husband, romantic notes from younger years, and stories of a wasted summer flicker between the present and past, as the protagonist reflects on how relationships between herself and the dear departed once were.

Gender roles come into focus in the collection’s central piece, “Lying Under the Apple Tree.” Shutting her eyes to block out reality, a woman reflects on her past relationship before writing a novel where she follows blindly the norms of courting and marriage that society has proscribed for her. As the story progresses, she finds the courage to break away from these restrictive rules.

In “Twice upon a Time”, a young girl takes her powerful midas touch to a hospital, awarding healing to some of the most desperate of cases. A remarkable wonder story, exploration of how power shifts dynamically in a family is offered in “Dolly.” And, in a reversal of the usually spark worthy beginning of a love story, Mona finds that their’s more to her relationship with her cousin that she originally thought in the story “Spelling.”

Though Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage spans fantasy, the mundane, and many points of the emotional scale, at its core it is a collection about relationships. Where one's power lies and how our initially negative perceptions are challenged are explored as the tales both conclude and begin. We're introduced to characters lying under apples trees. The characters are resonant, events often inconclusive. Munro paints pictures of individuals in the throes of life transitions, where resolution is not the main goal, but rather understanding of what it is to try and find who we are both to others the to ourself.

Alice Munro’s collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a unique offering of characters and emotions. Humans of all ages, genders and decades experience love, loss and desire in this magical take on the understanding of relationships. Through joy and sadness, through heartbreak and reconciliation, Munro takes her readers on a journey that presents how a truly powerful story can be realized within the simple moments of life.