Nettles
By Alice Munro
Guide to Reading
Alice Munro is a prolific writer, who has made a major careerout of short fiction. In the past 35 years, she has produced numerous short stories that are read in and outside of Canada, often appearing in such prestigious magazines as The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Today she is still active in her writing career.
Like her many other stories, the subject of the story “Nettles” is about the problem of a middle-aged woman—the passions, confusions and dilemmas that any woman in a modern society might be confronted with, regardless of race, color or nationality. In this story, the narrator meets her childhood friend by chance at the very stage of her life when she is caught up in a troubled relationship with her husband and her children. She is delighted with this reunion. This joy quickly turns into a tender and ambiguous feeling toward this man--a de
sire and passion she herself is not sure of. The two of them go through a wildstorm. In order to protect themselves from being knocked down by the violent wind, they hold each other firmly. When the wind passes, they kiss and press together in a gesture of recognition of survival. At this moment the man tells her his deepest secret. She realizes that “he was a person who had hit rock bottom.” She is happy that he treats her as a “person he had, on his own, who knew.” What happened or rather, what does not happen between them gives her a new perceptionof love, “Love that was not usable, that knew its place. Not risking a thing yet staying alive as a sweet trickle, an underground resource.”
The narration of this story is marked by a clear regional identity and shifts in time with a prominent element of retrospectionrevealing the protagonist’s ambiguous hold of the past, throwing light on the present. The author employs a skillful but natural narrative voice, which effortlessly leads the reader on toward an openand yet conclusive ending. While reading the story, the reader is likely to forget that this is only a fiction and that the protagonist is but a character created by art. The author succeeds in bridging the gap between art and reality and presenting the fictional character as an acquaintance or even
a friend. Thus the reader is apt to identify with the protagonist, feeling what she feels and worrying about what worries her.
In this short story the author addressesseveral essential problems of everyday life such as friendship and love, marriage and divorce. Once again “Nettles” displays Munro’s lasting strength that arises from her ability to create an illusorysimplicity that combines the telling of a simple plot and the probing of complicated feelings and subtle meanings of life.
Text
1. In the summer of 1979, I walked into the kitchen of my friend Sunny’s house near Uxbridge, Ontario, and saw a man standing at the counter, making himself a ketchup sandwich.
2. I have driven around in the hills northeast of Toronto, with my husband－my second husband, not the one I had left behind that summer－and I have looked for the house, in an idly persistent way, I have tried to locate the road it was on, but I have never succeeded.
It has probably been torn down. Sunny and her husband sold it a few years after I visited them. It was too far from Ottawa, where they lived, to serve as a convenient summer place. Their children, as they became teenagers, balked at going there. And there was too much upkeep work for Johnston－Sunny’s husband－who liked to spend his weekends golfing.
(Rewritten as: Years afterward, driving around in the hills northeast of Toronto with another man, I looked for the house. I tried to locate the road it was on, but I never succeeded. It had probably been torn downalice spring怎么读. Sunny and her husband sold it a few years after I visited them. It was too far from Ottawa, where they lived, to serve as a convenient summer place. )

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