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Allan Stratton: In defence of Alice Munro

13 0
10.07.2024

Munro betrayed her daughter. She didn’t betray us. To pretend that readers are in any way Munro’s victims is self-aggrandizement

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The cancel culture crowd is gunning for Nobel Prize-winner Alice Munro, one of Canada’s most distinguished authors. It’s been open season since her daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner, published the gut-wrenching account of her mother’s betrayal on learning she’d been sexually abused by her stepfather. Social media posts show Munro’s books being tossed in the garbage. Western University is re-evaluating its ties to its famous graduate. Her publishers are not coming to her defence.

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Gerald Fremlin abused Skinner when she was nine years hold. She told her mother years later. Munro left her husband briefly, apparently not because of his child abuse, but because of what she perceived as his infidelity. Munro refused to discuss the matter further, insisting that what happened in Skinner’s childhood was between her and her stepfather.

In 2005, Skinner gave the police letters Fremlin had written that acknowledged what he’d done but shifted the blame to her. He was charged, convicted and given a suspended sentence and two years of probation. Still, Munro stayed with him. Skinner wrote that Munro said that she had been “told too late” about the abuse, that she loved him too much to leave him and that she couldn’t be........

© National Post


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