Friend of My Youth

First edition

Friend of My Youth is a book of short stories by Alice Munro, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1990. It won the 1990 Trillium Book Award.

Stories

• "Friend of My Youth"
• "Five Points"
• "Meneseteung"
• "Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass"
• "Oranges and Apples"
• "Pictures of the Ice"
• "Goodness and Mercy"
• "Oh, What Avails"
• "Differently"
• "Wigtime"

Friend of My Youth

"Friend of My Youth," the title story, largely consists of a reminiscence of the narrator a family, particularly one sister, Flora, that her now-deceased mother boarded with before her marriage.

Five Points

"Five Points," the second story, is about a married woman, Brenda, in Ontario having an affair. Her boyfriend, Neil, tells her about a confectionery he frequented his youth in Victoria, British Columbia, and its owners.

Literature

• Lynn Blin, Alice Munro’s Naughty Coordinators in “Friend of My Youth”, in: Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE)/Les cahiers de la nouvelle, ISSN 0294-0442, n° 55 (Autumn 2010), Special issue: The Short Stories of Alice Munro.
• Deborah Heller, Getting Loose: Women and Narration in Alice Munro's Friend of my Youth, in: The rest of the story. Critical essays on Alice Munro, edited by Robert Thacker, ECW Press, Toronto 1999, ISBN 1-55022-392-5, pp. 60–80.