The Love of a Good Woman : Stories

337 Pages·1999·4.25 MB·English

by  Alice Munro

THE LOVE OF
A GOOD WOMAN

THE LOVE OF
A GOOD WOMAN

Stories by

ALICE MUNRO

A DOUGLAS GIBSON BOOK
Copyright © 1998 by Alice Munro

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or
stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher — or, in case
of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright
Licensing Agency — is an infringement of the copyright law.

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Munro, Alice, 1931-
The love of a good woman

ISBN 0-7710-6685-6

I. Title.
PS8576.U57L68 1998 C813’.54 C98-931550-9
PR9199.3.M86L68 1998

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further
acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program.

Some of the stories in this collection were originally published in the following: The New
Yorker: “The Love of a Good Woman,” “Cortes Island,” “Save the Reaper,” “The Children
Stay,” and “Before the Change”; Saturday Night: “Jakarta.”

All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.

Typeset in Fournier
Printed and bound in Canada

A Douglas Gibson Book

McClelland & Stewart Inc.
The Canadian Publishers
481 University Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
M5G 2E9

1 2 3 4 5 6 03 02 01 00 99 98
For Ann Close
My valued editor
and constant friend

CONTENTS

The Love of a Good Woman

Jakarta

Cortes Island

Save the Reaper

The Children Stay

Rich as Stink

Before the Change

My Mother’s Dream
AUTHOR’S NOTE

For certain expert information essential to these
stories, my thanks to Ruth Roy, Mary Carr, and D. C.
Coleman. And for his inspired and ingenious
research on many occasions, I thank Reg Thompson.

Stories included in this collection that were
previously published in The New Yorker appeared
there in very different form.
THE LOVE OF
A GOOD WOMAN