"Too Much Happiness" may be the title of Alice Munro's next book. But for Douglas Gibson, Munro's publisher of 30 years, it captures the Canadian author's mood after winning the third-ever Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement on Tuesday.
"I am very pleased - and absolutely amazed and thrilled," Munro said in a statement. "To be among such candidates for the prize was a great honour in itself. It's especially great at my time of life to have this recognition of a lifetime's work."
The British-based award is given out every two years to honour an author for an entire body of work that has contributed to fiction around the world.
Munro is the first Canadian to scoop up this prize.
"I joked with her. 'Well Alice, your statement should say this is a nice launch to my new book coming out.'...But she reacted like Alice. She was very modest. She was very surprised," Gibson told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
It's an accomplishment that says volumes about Munro and the state of Canadian literature, says Gibson.
"If writing were an Olympic event our guys would be on the podium all the time. Here's evidence of that," says Gibson.
One of the world's most renowned short-story writers and the winner of numerous literary awards, Munro has lived in and spent much of her career writing about the lives of women in small Canadian towns.
In fact, Munro has raised the ordinariness of the human condition to a new level of art.
Her first collection of short stories, "Dance of the Happy Shades" (1968), won the Governor General's Literary Award as did her 1978 collection "Who Do You Think You Are?"
Many awards followed, including the Trillium Book Award (1990), two Giller Prize wins in 1998 and 2004, and the O. Henry Award for Continuing Achievement in Short Fiction in 2004.
Munro'sstories frequently appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Mademoiselle, The Paris Review and The Atlantic Monthly.
Her moving story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" also served as the inspiration for Sarah Polley's Oscar-nominated film, "Away From Her."
Not bad for a writer born 77 years ago into a family of fox and poultry farmers.
Munro gets to heart of who we are
Even if you have never read Munro she knows you, says Gibson.
Her ability to see into people's hearts and capture their trials and tribulations with such moving clarity is the secret to Munro's enormous popularity around the world.
"Newcomers to her work can't believe how much it resonates with them," says Gibson. "It's not unusual for them to say, 'I heard she was great.' But until you actually read her you don't know how wonderful she really is."
Filled with incredible life wisdom, Munro's books yank the film off your eyes.
"We're talking a genius here," says Gibson.
Ever the perfectionist, Gibson says, "Alice rewrites until it is perfect."
As he says, "The Atlantic magazine nine years ago said Alice Muntro is the writer most likely to be read in 100 years time."
That's what you call too much happiness.
