SOURCE: "Never Ending Story," in Meanjin, Vol. 54, No. 2, 1995, pp. 233-40.

In the following review, London praises Open Secrets as a mature work of Munro's that contains "stories of formidable urgency and integrity."

Alice Munro has established an international readership based solely on the short story (in Australia we would use Frank Moorhouse's term and call her two novels 'discontinuous narratives'), an achievement which at this moment, in English, is rivalled only by that of Raymond Carver.

Her publishing life spans two decades of exceptional experimentation in the short story form, from postmodern metafiction to 'dirty' realism, from such writers as Barthelme, Barth and Carver in North America, Cower, Moorhouse and Garner in Australia. In the early eighties it reached a peak of critical approval and apparent popularity, which has now receded. In its single defining feature—brevity—the short story has always served as a vehicle for 'having...