Beside the fact that reading the story reveals a lack of either vocabulary or easiness of oral expression, perhaps just a lack of practice, I rediscover the pleasure of immersing in the universe of literature.
I find it particularly fascinating to analyse the structure of the story and to see how a story doesn’t necessarily have to be told as a linear event but can be presented as a time-travel journey into the past, the distant past, the present and the future. The main event, the five-day hospital-stay of the father and the circular movements of the narrator’s memories of other events, dialogues and explanations create something like a painting. This picture of the family relationships of the narrator shows the difficulty of family members who love one another but cannot express their love verbally.
Of course this story is also an incentive to think about my own family relationships, how I deal with preferences, rejections, expectations, tensions, unexpressed love, divorce and death of family members.
But above all I admire Alice Munro’s ability to observe relationships, emotions, people and their every-day-life experiences and her art of linguistic and literary expression. How brilliant - she created a literary parallel to the movements of Jupiter and its moons!
-- Anita Fleury
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