From Literature Resource Center:
Many critics echo the sentiments of Catherine Sheldrick who states that the stories of Alice Munro present “ordinary experiences so that they appear extraordinary, invested with a kind of magic.” It is this emphasis on the seemingly mundane progression of female lives that prompted Ted Solataroff to call Munro a “great stylist of 1920′s realism, a Katherine Anne Porter brought up to date.” Similarly, Joyce Carol Oates finds “the evocation of emotions, ranging from bitter hatred to love, from bewilderment and resentment to awe . . . [in] an effortless, almost conversational tone” evidence that “we are in the presence of an art that works to conceal itself, in order to celebrate its subject.” Occasionally faulted for limiting herself to a narrow thematic range, Munro is, nevertheless, widely regarded as a gifted short story writer whose strength lies in her ability to present the texture of everyday life with both compassion and unyielding precision.