people hate children

idk

If you take out the fact that this story is about Alice Munro—so remove the art, the Nobel Prize, all of that—what you’re left with is a very typical story about a mother who chooses the man in her life over her children:

In 1992, Andrea Robin Skinner wrote her mother, Alice Munro, a letter that opened with a warning.

“Dear Mom,” it began. “Please find a spot alone before you read this … I have been keeping a terrible secret for 16 years, Gerry abused me sexually when I was nine years old. I have been afraid all my life that you would blame me for what happened.”

Munro’s youngest daughter, then 25, knew her words would devastate her mother, already established as one of Canada’s greatest writers for her award-winning short stories. Gerry was Gerald Fremlin, the love of Alice Munro’s life, her second husband and Andrea’s stepfather. The letter, Andrea imagined, would change everything.

Instead, the secret that had haunted the Munro family for years would continue to do so for decades more.…