Dear Life

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Dear Life, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012). This book includes, at the end, four pieces that she describes as "autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact."

A little bit of Dear Life, and Mrs. Dalloway

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... he was annoyed when the girl who took the tickets told him that she was going to have to quit, because she was having a baby. He might have expected this--she had been married for half a year, and in those days you were supposed to get out of the public eye before you began to show--but he so disliked change and the idea of people having private lives that he was taken by surprise.

From "Leaving Maverley," originally published in The New Yorker (November 28, 2011) and reprinted in Dear Life, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012).

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And then, opening her eyes, how fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked . . .

From Mrs. Dalloway, a novel by Virginia Woolf (Harcourt, 1925).

Three poems and a short story

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"Invitation," a poem by Mike White, West Branch (Issue 65, Fall/Winter 2009).

"The Ruin of Amalfitano," a short story by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, Harper's Magazine (October 2012, pp. 67-74).

"Remember to Learn from Your Mistakes," a poem by JodiAnn Stevenson, www.bowlofmilk.com (2003).

"Fruit," a poem by JodiAnn Stevenson, www.bowlofmilk.com (2004).

Unless (Carol Shields)

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"In my new life--the summer of the year 2000--I am attempting to 'count my blessings.' Everyone I know advises me to take up this repellant strategy, as though they really believe a dramatic loss can be replaced by the renewed appreciation of all one has been given."

"My daughter is living like a vagabond on the streets of Toronto, but even so I had to have four yards of screened bark mulch delivered to the house this morning, $141.91, including haulage."

From Unless, a novel by Carol Shields (HarperCollins, 2002).