Too Much Happiness

　　2013諾貝爾文學獎得主
　　2009年布克獎得主

　　推出這部收錄十篇故事的精湛小說之後，艾莉絲•孟若也贏得了2009年的曼布克國際文學獎。

　　從第一篇既令人心碎又驚悚的故事中，年輕的妻子暨母親在一場可怕的事故中失去她的孩子，卻又從一個最教人不可思議的地方得到慰藉；另一篇故事裡，一名年輕女子，在受到不尋常與屈辱的誘惑之後，做出風格聰明、甚至可說是讓人欽佩的反應。其他故事則揭示了婚姻中的「深淵」、孩子們出人意料的殘酷，以及與書名同名的長篇故事，描述19世紀一名女數學家的冬季旅程與她的愛及渴望——

　　〈空間〉痛失三名愛子、丈夫入獄的少婦，原本以為自己再也不可能有得到平靜的一天，卻在某次探視過後，在最不可能的人身上找到放過自己的機會。

　　〈虛構〉新銳小說家推出的短篇小說集，半真半假地摻雜了童年不堪回首的往事；當故事的主角之一讀到這篇故事，她選擇了既優雅又別出心裁的方式，回應了遙遠的記憶。

　　〈自由基〉罹患絕症、生命只剩幾個月的老婦人，她的丈夫卻早她一步猝死。某天早晨，一名年輕男子出現在她家門前，帶給她一段更驚悚的死亡經歷。

　　〈臉〉一名臉上有一片紫色胎記的男孩誕生。他的父親對此感到恥而不談，而在母親的保護下，他度過一段堪稱無憂無慮的童年，直到他唯一的朋友在自己的臉上、與男孩胎記相同的位置，塗上了一片紅色的油漆。

　　〈某些女人〉因白血病臥病在床、瀕死的男主人，與他在學校教書的妻子、他年長而嚴肅的繼母同住在一間屋簷下，敵對的三角關係卻因一名女按摩師的到來而令他們以某種出人意料的方式團結一致。

　　〈童戲〉女教師收到童年好友的臨終留言，不得不再次回想童年那一段愉快的夏令營日子，與那年夏天不怎麼足與外人道的分離。

　　〈木頭〉幫人整修老舊桌椅的退伍軍人有個不為人知的嗜好：研究可砍伐的樹木與樹林。當他聽說了某塊林地即將被財團收購，他走進林子想最後砍一批樹，沒想到竟發生這輩子唯一的一場砍樹意外。

　　……清晰而平易近人，艾莉絲•孟若再次將複雜、困難的事件以及情感，融入這些男男女女不可預期的相處方式，更往往超乎他們人生經歷的故事之中。

　　★本書中譯版《太多幸福》由木馬文化出版。

　　Brilliantly paced, lit with sparks of danger and underlying menace, these are dazzling, provocative stories about Svengali men, and radical women who outmanoeuvre them, about destructive marriages and curdled friendships, about mothers and sons, about moments which change or haunt a life. Alice Munro takes on complex, even harrowing emotions and events, and renders them into stories that surprise, amaze and shed light on the unpredictable ways we accommodate to what happens in our lives. A wife and mother, whose spirit has been crushed, finds release from her extraordinary pain in the most unlikely place. The young victim of a humiliating seduction (which involves reading Housman in the nude) finds an unusual way to get her own back and move on. An older woman, dying of cancer, weaves a poisonous story to save her life. Other stories uncover the 'deep holes' in marriage and their consequences, the dangerous intimacy of girls and the cruelty of children. The long title story follows Sophia Kovalevsky, a late nineteenth-century Russian emigree and mathematical genius, as she takes a fateful winter journey that begins with a visit to her lover on the Riviera, and ends in Sweden, where she is a professor at the only university willing to hire a woman to teach her subject. Munro's unsettling stories turn lives into art, expand our world and our understanding of the strange workings of the human heart.

 

作者簡介

艾莉絲．孟若（Alice Munro）

　　二〇一三年諾貝爾文學獎得主。1931年生於安大略省溫安鎮，後就讀西安大略大學，因婚休學。先後著有十一本短篇小說選集、一部長篇小說及一本《短篇小說精選集》。曾三度獲加拿大總督文學獎（Governor General’s Literary Awards）、兩度獲頒吉勒文學獎（Giller Prize）、2009年獲曼布克國際文學獎（Man Booker International Prize）。另曾獲Rea短篇小說獎（Rea Award for the Short Story）、萊南文學獎（Lannan Literary Award）、英國W. H. 史密斯書獎、美國國家書獎之書評獎。平日短篇小說作品散見《紐約客》、《大西洋月刊》、《巴黎評論》等雜誌。其作品已被譯為十三種語言。現居安大略省鄰近休倫湖的小鎮克林頓。

　　Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published thirteen collections of stories as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women, and two volumes of Selected Stories. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two of its Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England’s W. H. Smith Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Man Booker International Prize. In 2013 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron.