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I received Alice Munro’s collection of short stories Carried Away for Christmas this year.  The first story I read was the last story in the book, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” published in consecutive issues of The New Yorker in late 1999 and early 2000.  Powerful story, very well-told.  If you’re short on time, skip the rest of this posting…heck, skip reading any more of anything…until you’ve read this short story.

If this story is a fair representation of Alice Munro’s writing, I’m embarrassed that it has taken me until now to discover her writing.  The story is featured in a wonderful review (published in New York Times in 2004) of Runaway.

This story would make a great movie.  So upon returning home from vacation I start looking up Alice Munro to find out more about her (and whether she might be amenable to optioning her stories for film)…only to discover that the story has just been made into a film (Away from Her, starring Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, and Michael Murphy and directed by Sarah Polley).  It will be released in the U.S. in May 2007.  Too bad for me. 

Silver lining: It will be interesting to see how the story has been translated to the screen, compared with how I envisioned it.

2/2/2007 Update: A friend returned recently from Sundance, where he saw and liked Away from Her. “Great performances, moving film,” says he.