"Post and Beam"

The next story in Alice Munro's collection is called Post and Beam, the 7th story in the collection. I enjoyed this story better than the previous story. This was had an interesting take on the ending. But first I'll try and give a general summery of the story. This story was a little shorter as well. I think the next few will be about the same length from what I saw flipping through to see their length.


First we meet this young man named Lionel, who is supposed to be a genius, at least that is what I understood. He went to college at a young age, but he ended up having a mental breakdown and was sent to a mental institution. But somehow he becomes friends with Lorna and her family. The rest of the story follows Lorna and her cousin Polly who comes to visit. Her husband is under the impression that Polly is going to ask for money but Lorna doesn't believe it. But later in the story she gets the idea that Polly is planning on staying, and not returning her her grandmother and aunt whom she has been living with her whole life. And Polly gets the idea that Lorna's family does not want her around anymore.

And after all of this, Lorna and her family go off to a wedding they had been invited to for the weekend, and on the way back, Lorna gets worried that Polly might have done something terrible to herself because of the way things were when they left. I won't go much further because I don't want to spoil the ending, but it wasn't exactly what I had expected.

One thing that I have noticed in this collection so far is that Munro seems to write from the female perspective most of the time. At least she has so far with the first 7 stories. It could vary as I continue through the collection, but the last few have been female dominate in point of view. I'm not saying its a bad thing, it's just an observation that I noticed today. But once again, this story is full of detail, but it isn't overwhelmingly detailed. It's just enough and worded so well that you can picture everything you need to to get inside these characters' minds and pasts. I absolutely love her writing style.