There are even two titles though published as “La Sirena”, it was originally called “Lighea”, the name of the siren, portrayed as a 16-year-old girl. It contains two narrative planes, two central protagonists, two settings, two tonal registers and two points of view. In addition to his celebrated novel The Leopard, he left behind some short stories, including “The Siren”, a mysterious masterpiece that jolts and haunts me every time I read it. Photograph: Alice Munro./Alamy “The Siren” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1961)īorn in Palermo in 1896, Lampedusa was a learned prince who died before his work was published. Tessa HadleyĪlice Munro carries us deep inside particular moments. A woman moves among the willows beside a river at night, making up her mind. The sociology of a small town in rural Ontario is caught on the wing in the loose weave of her narration the story takes in whole lifetimes, and yet its pace is also exquisitely slow, carrying us deep inside particular moments. Like so many of Munro’s stories, this one has the scope of a novel yet never feels hurried or crowded. It’s about a murder – probably it’s a murder, because nothing is certain – and a love match that depends on keeping that murder secret. George Saunders “The Love of a Good Woman” by Alice Munro (1998)Īmong the handful of short stories closest to my heart, I’ve chosen “The Love of a Good Woman” by Canadian writer Munro, from her 1998 collection of that name. A wonderful sampling of her stories is available in Women in Their Beds: New & Selected Stories. Berriault, who died in 1999, is known as a San Francisco writer. But it is a much deeper and more biblical story than that and, like any great work of art, resists reduction. This great and underrated masterpiece is a meditation on good and evil and especially about the way that people’s expectations and assumptions about us may wear us down and eventually force us into compliance with their view.

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