"Too Much Happiness" by Alice Munroe ****

Alice Munro’s work is customarily fascinating. This multiple award winning, Canadian, author, which the New York Times Book Review claimed “Alice Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America, continues to produce captivating work. This book of short stories has a diversity of focus, an assortment of characters, a variety of settings, and multiplicity of messages. All of the stories fundamentally have a “human interest” consideration that ranges from a woman visiting her husband who is in prison for committing a heinous crime, the impact that a severe facial birthmark has on a man, the weird relationship between an elderly male and young abandoned teenager, a exposition on the multiple types of wood that is an integral part of the life of a furniture builder/wood cutter, and the shocking behaviour of two young teenagers towards a mentally handicapped acquaintance.

The title, Too Much Happiness, comes from the final story that is longer than the others. It is a clinical reflection on the final days of the real-life mathematician Sophia Kovalevsy in the late 1890’s. Although it is interesting because it is based on fact, it isn’t as captivating as the other works in the book.