Too Much Happiness (38 page)

I have limited my story to the days leading up to Sophia’s death, with flashbacks to her earlier life. But I do urge anybody interested to read the Kennedys’ book, which presents such historical and mathematical riches.

June 2009

Alice Munro
Clinton, Ontario
Canada

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published eleven previous collections of stories—
Dance of the Happy Shades; Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You; The Beggar Maid; The Moons of Jupiter; The Progress of Love; Friend of My Youth; Open Secrets; The Love of a Good Woman; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Runaway;
and
The View from Castle Rock
—as well as a novel,
Lives of Girls and Women
, and a
Selected Stories
. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including three of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards and two of its Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, England’s W. H. Smith Book Award, and the United States’ National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have appeared in
The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review
, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2009 by Alice Munro

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Society of Authors for permission to reprint “Away” from
The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare
(London: Faber, 1969). Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Munro, Alice.
Too much happiness : stories / by Alice Munro. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27323-9
I. Title.
PR9199.3.M8A6  2009
813′.54—dc22    2009020010

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