Meghan Daum in Substack:
Alice Munro, considered one of the greatest short-story writers of modern times, was a monster.
The world learned this on Sunday, within moments of the Toronto Star hitting “publish” on an essay by Munro’s daughter, Andrea Skinner. The title of the essay, in full SEO bloom, tells you everything you need to know: “My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him.”
In stark yet elegant prose, Skinner describes years of abuse at the hands of Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin, who assaulted her when she was 9 and went on to spend years committing lewd behavior against her and other children. Shortly after the first assault, Skinner told her stepmother about it, who told her father, who decided not to tell Munro. A few years later, when family friends told Munro that Fremlin had exposed himself to their 14-year-old daughter, Fremlin denied it and Munro took no action. When Munro asked Fremlin if he had done the same to her own daughter, his answer was along the lines of “She’s not my type.”
If Fremlin’s behavior is nauseating in its cruelty and arrogance, Munro’s denials and narcissism are a shock to the conscience.
More here.