“Meneseteung"
"Meneseteung” offers a somewhat confusing narrator who seems capable of traveling through time. The introduction of outside sources to the narrative through things like newspaper clippings and book excerpts has the effect of making that narrator’s reliability part of the story.
“Day of the Butterfly"
“Day of the Butterfly” is a story about sixth grade cruelty told from the distance of a matured narrator. The story revolves around the result that everybody but the teacher probably expects when she admonishes her class to be nice to a student.
“Boys and Girls”
This story is about a young girl’s dawning recognition that her sex is trained by the family unit and society to become inferior to the male. The young daughter’s first act of feminist rebellion in detail in all the sad reality that should be expected from a story published in 1968 in The Montrealer.
“Walker Brothers Cowboy”
A young female narrator recounts the coming of age experience of learning the great mysteries of the life parents lived before their children came along.
“The Moons of Jupiter”
A visit to a planetarium brings an epiphany allowing a grown daughter to deal with potentially life-ending surgery her father has decided to undergo.
“The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
A couple who have been married for decades face the prospective consequences of Alzheimer’s.
"The Ticket"
An ironic examine of the nature of love and weddings as a bride realizes that woman who has handed her funds to pay for getting out of the marriage if it doesn’t work out—Aunt Charlie—is also the woman in the family who actually did marry for love.
“How I Met My Husband”
One of Munro’s most often anthologized stories recalls 15 year old Edie’s infatuation with an older boy who promised to write. Though she waits by the mailbox every day for a letter to arrive, it never does. She winds up marrying the mailman who always tells the story of how they met thinking she was waiting for him at the mailbox.
“Runaway”
In which abused wife Carla is urged by neighbor Sylvia to run away from her husband Clark and when she finally decides to run is joined by Sylvia in making the escape.
“Gravel”
When her mother is made pregnant by a wannabe actor, the narrator finds that her entire life is turned upside down by moving into a trailer by a gravel pit.
“Child’s Play”
Sweet little Marlene and Charlene become fast friends at summer camp. They share everything in those innocent childhood days of carefree fun and play. Even that time they both were complicit in holding underwater the head of that “special needs” girl Verna.
