Last year, I was rummaging through a used bookstore to see what titles would catch my eye. Somewhere among the endless titles was the author Alice Munro, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning anthology “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You” was staring back at me. With curiosity, I bought it with intent on seeing if there was something about her prose that spoke to me. With phenomenal blurbs on the back, I’ve taken up the challenge of working my way through these pages to see if I have found a new favorite. Given that she has a fascination with time and interpersonal relationships, I’m sure this will be a fulfilling journey. The only way to find out is to dive right in.
After a few stories on more romantic relationships, it’s interesting to see Munro shift attention to the family dynamics with “Forgiveness in Families.” On the one hand, they have always been in the background of every story going back to the first in this anthology. However, they were presented in a combative nature with people falling in love and forming jealousy around their attention shifting. What I find exciting about the author’s writing so far is that even when writing protagonists who seem to be in the right, there’s enough grey area to suggest that they’re either unreliable or manipulating the truth to make them seem more sympathetic. I think of “Material” and how the protagonist tries to paint her husband as the villain while compromising an innocent woman’s safety. On top of being entertaining, these are stories that reward a moment to step back and reconsider what had just been said.
Throughout “Forgiveness in Families,” I was reminded of the previous entry “Walking on Water” which Munro considers to be a lesser work but has so many loose ends that it provokes thought on religion and independence. Maybe all of it made sense or none of it did. Having this implicit approach going into “Forgiveness in Families” allows for protagonist Val to seem more cryptic and possibly even bitter. Even if the motivations aren’t directly about religion, one can’t help but think about how Val’s mother is impacted by spirituality in a time of crisis. She’s not actually a believer, but those more faith-leaning may think that there’s some grander force driving the events of the story. Then again, maybe nothing happened at all, and it was just a fluke.
Like most stories so far, Val’s narration is simply a vessel to spread gossip about her brother Cam. If one were to outline a character report on Val, it’s not likely that the 12 pages would provide much depth. Sure, it’s easy to understand her emotionally in relation to her mother and Cam, but what is being said about her? As I’ll return to, I think that Munro’s lack of details allows for something interpretive that either makes her the sympathetic hero or someone who is greatly jealous of Cam for a variety of reasons. His life is interesting and full of these stories. Hers is conventional and lacks a greater narrative agency. Is she really happy with how her life has turned out and is projecting on the man who fills her life with eventfulness?
Some early details provide a strong sense of why Val would be resentful of Cam’s very existence. When her mother criticizes her for being hard on that “boy,” Val can’t help but chirp up and call him a “man.” In many respects, Cam is the youngest character and thus has an implicit childishness built into this reading. A mother sees their child as youthful no matter what, but here it feels like it’s the type of perspective that overlooks Cam’s lack of focus. He’s going to run through jobs without any greater complaints from his mother. He’s going to change his identity many times by the last page. Meanwhile, Val will remain stagnant. She starts responsible and ends responsible, albeit with a stronger resentment at the end that Cam didn’t get some karmic payoff for the foolishness he performs throughout his life.
Though that is to ignore a lifelong resentment that feels more justified from Val’s perspective. On the first page, she recounts her first day of school. For anyone else, it would be a momentous day when your parents usher you to the door and watch as you start your educational journey. It’s an endearing moment with plenty of sentiment to boot. For a child, it’s that little extra encouragement in a moment of great uncertainty. So, where was Val’s mother in all of this? She was in the hospital giving birth to Cam. She recounts how everyone else had their mothers there and she was alone, embarrassed. It’s one of those events that seems justifiable but could symbolically set up a sibling rivalry since Val has felt like she’s been alone since the very beginning, never as beloved as her brother. By the end of the first page, Cam gets quite the arc as he’s seen vomiting onto Val’s wedding cake.
I believe that a lot of the resentment that Val has for Cam is expertly written across the first two pages. Without reflecting on her own life, the details she chooses to focus on suggest a jealousy of the haves and have nots. She may be married, but she has to deal with a juvenile brother who doesn’t offer a lot of encouragement. When he was younger, he had asthma and had to stay home for weeks on end watching soap operas. At most, Val ran errands for him. She’d get him books and make sure that he’d have the best possible chances of a successful life. Had this paragraph come before the cake incident, there’s a chance that the reader would be quicker to sympathize with Cam. Instead, because we know he’s a bit of a screw-up, it’s easy to see his misfortune as instilling poor behaviors that become omnipresent by the final pages.
There’s an emphasis on his work career. Given that his mother thought that Cameron was a good university president name, there’s a suggestion that she always saw him as a future leader. He was the golden child without any receipts to prove it. As he grew older, he never got there. However, he did get into various jobs that included working at a movie theater where he seemed to spend more time watching films than creating long-lasting work habits. In a very amusing detail, Munro describes his favorite film as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). The subtext is there for those who have seen the film, as it focuses on a man kidnapping women and forcing them to fall in love with his brothers up in the snow-covered hills. Given how much his mother saw him as the perpetual hero, it’s a hilariously intentional detail that rewards outside research.
He had other jobs and careers, but the important one is when he joined a religious cult. It’s here that the themes could potentially overlap with “Walking on Water.” Over these two stories, Munro seems critical of religion. “Forgiveness in Families” is a much more comical take and one that maybe reflects how the only meaning one gets out of it is what they put into it. After all, mother stopped believing as a teenager. There was no prodding from the family unit to do this. It feels more like his chance to solve his identity crisis with spirituality. He has a community that validates his simpleton ways. There’s even the reality that he’s not making any money or providing any greater contributions to the world. It’s in some ways the most selfish thing he’s done (at least from Val’s perspective).
What I love about the final third of the story is how it shifts from a retrospective of Cam’s life to an active exploration of the sibling dynamic. Having created this sense of who Cam is and how loathsome Val finds him, it’s time to create the ultimate speculation. What would happen if their mother died? Would that be Cam’s wake-up call? Maybe it would bring Val closer to him and they’d form a deeper bond. There are certain ways that this story could go that are cliché. The idea of a wholesome ending is suggested in a title that touts forgiveness. And yet, the ending suggests something more bitter and honest. Val forgives Cam less because of anything he did but more because of how this potential tragedy lacked a fatality.
In what may be the funniest part of the story, Val recalls Cam giving her an important phone call. Mother is sick and needs care. There is some strange belief that Val will be able to solve everything. Instead, she complains that Cam didn’t call an ambulance. It’s awkward and frustrating, but only the start of Cam’s meddling. While Val remains the loyal child who sacrifices her free time and waits for every new detail, Cam seems less concerned. He shows up at the hospital, but couldn’t be bothered to come alone. He brings along his friends who start a prayer circle in the hospital waiting room before being reprimanded by staff.
The way that Munro undercuts this traumatic event with humor is impeccable. The idea of grief being distracted by selfishness is a perfect sibling rivalry dynamic. As those pages continue, it’s easy to forget that they’re waiting anxiously for the news. The reader doesn’t know if mother will live or die. There’s a sense that Val partially wants her to die just to have Cam be proven wrong, that his faith was unhelpful, and that it’ll convince him to finally be a responsible adult. There’s that tension underlying the idea of generations being passed on to the next. On top of that, it creates a regret inside Val that she is so vindictive and selfish in her own right, putting her desires ahead of everyone else’s.
I’m still unsure if Val is ultimately a virtuous character or one who is much more flawed than she lets on. Because she throws every problem on Cam, it’s easy to see him as the conflict in the piece. However, what is she doing that’s all the better? She is being nice less out of compassion and more out of obligation. She is the responsible one and has felt the burden since she was a child to excel where he has failed. The pressure to be the good child is difficult and likely has taken a toll on her connection to the family. Does she even love her mother who seems more interested in Cam? There’s so much conflict that makes her wonder why she even tries.
As the ending suggests, one has to wonder if Cam really did anything to save her. There are coded correlations between his prayer circle and her recovery. However, mother wasn’t a believer. Her condition healed so gradually that it’s easy to see it as a natural progression. What ultimately is discussed is the reality that Cam does and doesn’t do anything throughout the entire story. He is an endearing oaf. With that said, does Val’s effort to do the right thing achieve anything greater? She didn’t personally heal her mother outside of calling the ambulance. Neither child is necessarily the hero here, and it could be why Val finds it easy to forgive Cam.
All in all, this is another great example of Munro’s writing. She presents something that may seem direct, but actually holds layers. Val is much more complicated than she lets on. Her resentment for Cam could actually be some guilt over how her own life turned out. It’s comical, but one that masks the pain that each character feels throughout. It comes to a point where one has to wonder what sacrificing your time really does for your family. She shows up for her brother and he vomits on her wedding cake. It’s not the most flattering form of gratitude, but it’s what she’s handed. The results are bittersweet and very frustrating, just like how family's supposed to be.
Coming Up Next: “Tell Me Yes or No”
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