The Story Archive

Open Secrets

Alice Munro · 1994 CE · Short Story · Modern / American · Contemporary

A librarian in Carstairs writes to a soldier at the front through the last year of the Great War and keeps writing after he stops answering, while the piano factory that employs half the county grinds on. Elsewhere a girl disappears from a church hiking party and a Canadian tourist is held captive in the Albanian mountains. Munro's most formally daring book, with plots that reach across decades and decline to close.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalMystery
Theme
Memory & TimeLoveJustice & RevengeWar & Violence
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
HeroineWandererGhost
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedEpisodicOpen Ending
Symbol / motif
The LetterThe Book / ManuscriptThe Machine
Conflict
vs Selfvs Person
Mode / tone
RealistIronic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues