The art of short story writing is by no means dead. Looking at the stacks of new books and best sellers in a book store today would give you the impression that everything belongs to the full length novel. Alice Munro has created almost a new form of writing. She specializes in short stories that kind of fit together to tell a more complete story of her life.The stories in this book definitely fall into that category. They are individual stories, complete and independent, but taken together seem to represent what has happened to a person going through life and growing up.In the second part of this book, called 'Home' Ms. Munro has said that they had not been published before because they were too personal. This book, along with her other ten collections of short stories and one novel represent a body of work that isn't exactly autobiographical but which seem to represent her life.