'She had no pegs to hang anything on'

Too Much Happiness took the Man Booker International Prize in 2009. This volume is doubly rewarding; it is a collection of short stories by one of the world's greatest writers, Alice Munro. It is an unexpected pleasure for short stories to be recognised and rewarded. It is said that she writes with "Tolstoyan resonance". She is perennially nominated for the Nobel Prize of Literature.

Munro is a Canadian who delves into the lives of people in Huron County in southeast Canada, mainly in Ontario, in and around Toronto. Her stories are usually about women, their friendships and the men who revolve around them. This is her 17th book and most of them are collections of short stories. Many of her stories are published first in magazines like The New Yorker, Paris Review and Atlantic Monthly. In reading Too Much Happiness I found I was actually re-reading most of the stories and it was a pleasure to do so.