For some reason, I found myself nostalgic for a time and place I have never experienced--not fin de siècle Paris or early 20th century New York, which it's easy to romanticize. Something colder, more remote. The desolation of small lake towns in Canada in the 70s and 80s, of winters without end on a remote farm off some dusty road. Places where it makes sense that love perhaps always leaves you empty and fulfilled all at once.
But that's not what I'm stealing here. Instead, I'm interested in the way Munro taps into the language of ordinary things. The way the world communicate with us, telling us how things are, the way metaphor smuggles in deeper truths.
"The eyelids pressed down heavily, like punishment, over her faded eyes" (Powers).
And mouths: "She was a slim suntanned woman in a purple dress, with a matching wide purple band holding back her dark hair. Handsome, but with little pouches of boredom or disapproval hiding in the corners of her mouth" (Passion).
"He had a high pale forehead, a crest of tight curly gray-black hair, bright gray eyes, a wide thin-lipped mouth that seemed to curl in on some vigorous impatience, or appetite, or pain" (Passion).
And rooms: "Along with the hard pressure of the light and the noise, there was the same feeling she got now in her own house, and that other people coming into her house must be aware of even more strongly.
The feeling of something being out of kilter, in a way that could not be fixed or altered but only resisted, as well as you could" (Powers).
