Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

With the title story serving as the inspiration for the new film Hateship Loveship, Alice Munro proves she is still at the height of her powers. In this latest collection, she creates narratives that loop and swerve like memory, conjuring up characters as thorny and contradictory as people we know ourselves. This is fiction at its finest, with a tough-minded housekeeper jettisoning the habits of a lifetime because of a teenager’s practical joke. A college student visiting her brassy, unconventional aunt stumbles on an astonishing secret and its meaning in her own life. An incorrigible philanderer responds with unexpected grace to his wife’s nursing-home romance.