Books like The Moons of Jupiter

Updated May 2016Alice Munro, around the time that The Moons Of Jupiter was published***The Moons Of Jupiter is Munro's fifth book, and I think it marked a turning point in her writing. A few stories ("Mrs. Cross And Mrs. Kidd," "Visitors") feel anachronistic, well-written and polished tales that could have been part of her first collection, Dance Of The Happy Shades. Others, like "Bardon Bus" and "Hard-Luck Stories," are cool, playful experiments – they're like literary puzzles – that don't quite pay off but are very enjoyable.Most importantly, Munro starts doing fascinating stuff with time and perspective in a way that she'd perfect in her next few books (The Progress Of Love, Friend Of My Youth, Open Secrets), demonstrating not just how much a short story can pack in but how shape and form – turning an event this way and that – can make you see life in a different way. Moons includes some of my all-time favourite Munro stories: the opening, two-part "Chaddeleys And Flemings," about the narrator's memories of her mother's and her father's families; the much-anthologized charmer "The Turkey Season," about a young girl's discovery of jealousy, sexual competition and humiliation while working at a turkey-gutting farm one Christmas; "Dulse," a tough look at a middle-aged poet's recovery from an affair (there's a nice subplot about a Willa Cather fan in this one); the mysterious "Labor Day Dinner," which has a conclusion that I still find thrilling; "Accident," which recounts an affair tinged by tragedy and features one of those time-leaping finales I mentioned earlier; and the poignant title tale, a personal story about a writer visiting her father in the hospital, which connects back to the book's opening diptych. (This last story also includes a brilliant scene set in one of Toronto's more recognizable landmarks, the planetarium, attached to the Royal Ontario Museum.)I revisit many of these stories often, but this was the first time I'd read the book again all the way through. With a writer like Munro, you see things you didn't before, if only because you've lived more life and can appreciate her profound insights into the human condition.