# What is the best Alice Munro short story collection?

> Early Ontario portraits, mid-career masterpieces and a final, openly autobiographical farewell, each one rewarding a slow read. Where do you stand?

*By YPB Team · Published September 8, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-alice-munro-short-story-collection*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Runaway** — score 1000/1000
   The 2004 collection of eight stories about women fleeing their circumstances, including the Juliet triptych.
2. **Friend of My Youth** — score 833/1000
   The 1990 collection exploring memory, betrayal and the gap between generations of women.
3. **The Love of a Good Woman** — score 577/1000
   The 1998 Giller Prize winner anchored by its novella-length title story about a drowning and a secret.
4. **Lives of Girls and Women** — score 500/1000
   Munro's 1971 book of linked stories tracing Del Jordan's coming of age in rural Ontario.
5. **The Moons of Jupiter** — score 500/1000
   The 1982 collection widely credited with cementing Munro's international reputation.
6. **Dear Life** — score 500/1000
   Munro's 2012 final collection, closing with four openly autobiographical pieces about her childhood.
7. **Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage** — score 500/1000
   The 2001 collection whose title story became the film Hateship Loveship.
8. **The Progress of Love** — score 409/1000
   The 1986 Governor General's Award winner about family history and the stories families tell themselves.
9. **Too Much Happiness** — score 409/1000
   The 2009 collection ranging from domestic violence to the life of mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky.
10. **The View from Castle Rock** — score 409/1000
   The 2006 collection weaving Munro's own Scottish family history into fiction.
11. **Who Do You Think You Are?** — score 300/1000
   The 1978 linked collection following Rose from small-town poverty to adulthood, published abroad as The Beggar Maid.
12. **Open Secrets** — score 167/1000
   The 1994 collection that ranges across generations of an Ontario town and its unresolved mysteries.
13. **Dance of the Happy Shades** — score 167/1000
   Munro's 1968 debut collection, which immediately won the Governor General's Award.
14. **Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You** — score 167/1000
   The 1974 collection of thirteen stories about secrets kept and revealed between women.

Tags: books, canada, short stories, alice munro