EOIDNA/2008-09/1º NA/Listening Comprehension
PART 2 and 3: Detalles e Ideas principales
You are going to listen to an interview with the Canadian writer Alice Munro. For
questions 1-6, choose the option a, b or c that best answers each of the
questions, as in the example (0-b). You will hear the recording twice.
INTERVIEW WITH CANADIAN WRITER ALICE MUNRO
(0) What’s the motive for the present interview?
A. She is over in Britain.
B. She’s got a new book of short stories out.
C. She’s been given an award.
1. What did English writer A.S. Byatt say about her?
A. There’s no better short story writer today.
B. Nobody writes better than her.
C. She’s the best Canadian writer.
2. Where did her ancestors come from?
A. From Canada itself.
B. From France.
C. From Scotland.
3. When did she start feeling the attraction of books?
A. When she was 7 and was ill
B. When she moved to a new place.
C. When she wasn’t allowed to play.
4. According to Munro, what was people’s attitude to women reading?
A. They thought it was good education for them.
B. They forbade them to read.
C. They thought it was some kind of fault, like drinking.
5. Was Alice Munro poor as a child?
A. She lived in extreme poverty.
B. She wasn’t any poorer than the rest of the community.
C. Her family was wealthy.
6. What’s the point of the story ‘A Hired Girl’?
A. It’s about a servant girl’s feelings.
B. It’s about envy.
C. It’s about becoming rich.
KEY TO ALICE MUNRO:
1A/ 2C/ 3A/ 4C/ 5B/ 6A
EOIDNA/2008-09/1º NA/Listening Comprehension
TAPESCRIPT INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MUNRO
We listen to an interview with Canadian writer Alice Munro about her latest collection of
short stories ‘The View from Castle Rock’. Alice Munro has some big name fans, some
famous fans. US novelist Jonathan Franson called her ‘ The best fiction writer working
in North America’ and the British author A.S. Byatt went further, describing her as ’The
greatest living short story living anywhere. ‘The View from Castle Rock’ is a
combination of autobiography, family history and fiction.
It begins back in the 19th century with Alice Munro’s great-great-great grandfathers’
boat journey from Scotland to Canada and stories from her family’s past eventually
lead to stories about her own life in small town contemporary Canada and as always
with Munro’s writing, stories about small things soon open a window of understanding
on the world at large, on the world in general.
Now here is Alice Munro talking to BBC interviewer Mariella Foxtrop about how and
when she first discovered the power and wonder of books.
“I discovered books when I was 7 years old and I’d had my tonsils out and couldn’t play
outside in the summer holidays and I started to read. I think, though, that in my family’s
life there was a strong feeling about books being a form of self-indulgement, reading
being… and there were lots of stories about how women took to reading like taking to
drink, you had neglected your house and your children and there was dust under the
beds and that kind of thing.”
Many of the stories in the book ‘The View from Castle Rock’ are about poverty, about
not having enough money even for basic needs: food, clothing and housing. They’re
also about hardship, about the difficulties caused by lack of money but Alice Munro
explains that she grew up at a time in Canada when people ‘could jump into the
middle-class’ if they had an education: “I must emphasize that this was not great
poverty, it was the poverty of the area where I lived, I didn’t grow up as an outcast at
all. I grew up in the same situation as most other people I knew but then when it was
almost inevitable that you would jump into the middle-class, as you would at that time
in my country’s history, if you got an education”.
However, Alice Munro is very interested in writing about the tension, the anxious, the
uneasy feelings caused by differences in wealth between people and by differences in
among their position in society. In a story called ‘A Hired Girl’ the servant girl narrating
the story feels angry about the carelessness of the wealthy family that she goes to
work for. Alice Munro explains that she remembers feeling angry about social injustice
when she was growing up:
Oh, no, I can remember the great rage that I felt at the time and it’s quite unreasonable
because all these people wanted was a good servant and that’s what her job was but
she wants to be a person in their lives and of course that isn’t possible, it’s not to be
expected. But this seemed a really interesting subject to write about. It’s a very
autobiographical story and I just love exploring this kind of tension in people, in their
lives.”
EOIDNA/2008-09/1º NA/Listening Comprehension