The prize-winning prose of Alice Munro

The second read of my Nobel Prize-winning Author Project was a bit of a cheat. After all, my aim with the project is supposedly to discover new authors whom I would normally consider too fancy for me. Nevertheless, I selected Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro, although I had already read her short story collection Too Much Happiness. Munro was a pretty safe bet, in other words, because I already knew that I enjoy her writing. Sort of.

My experiences with Too Much Happiness were mixed. It started out with the short story "Dimensions" which I really liked but which gave me a false impression of what a typical Munro short story would look like. The main character in "Dimensions" is living on autopilot after a terrible tragedy, but is brought back to life as it were by a dramatic, cathartic event. I expected more in the same vein, but cathartic events proved few and far between in the other stories. Near-misses, occasions that could have been momentous but don't quite come off, are more Munro's thing, and the prevailing tone is one of mild regret. Disappointed, I put the book aside for a long while when I reached the story "Face". A boy with a birthmark and a father who hates him – could it get more depressing?

When I gave the book another chance it turned out that the story, although not exactly cheerful, wasn't as depressing as I'd thought. It struck me then that although life could often have turned out better for Munro's characters, it could also have turned out a great deal worse. Sometimes something truly horrific happens, as in the chillingly convincing "Child's Play", but mostly pitch-dark tragedies like the one in "Dimensions" are absent, which makes it easier to do without the subsequent uplift.

When I stopped expecting the dramatic highs and lows of "Dimensions", I started to appreciate what can really make Munro a joy to read: the clear, precise, prose. I'm usually the barbaric kind of reader who pays more attention to character and plot than language. If I have a preference when it comes to the prose of "literary" fiction, it tends towards the flowery rather than the refined (think Dickens and Balzac). And yet Munro's style, apparently simple but full of astute observation and flowing easily along without long knotty sentences, won me over. I read the end of Who Do You Think You Are? during a plane journey, when I usually don't have the patience to focus on anything more demanding than chick-lit, and it went really well – I also found myself more relaxed than when I'm bound up in the stress-inducing problems of chick-lit heroines.

Who Do You Think You Are? is described by its blurb to be a "collection of stories" which "reads like a novel". My first reaction to this was: "Well, that's because it is". The interlinked stories follow the same protagonist, Rose, chronologically, highlighting some events first during her girlhood, then in adult life. It's hard not to think of the stories as novel chapters. They do seem to build off each other, and characters such as Rose and her stepmother Flo aren't reintroduced in every story, which makes me wonder how well they would function as independent short stories out of their context. But maybe we are told just enough about the characters in each particular story to follow what happens within its framework. In any case, it's far preferable to read the stories as a collection: you get a much clearer picture of Rose and the people closest to her.

Who Do You Think You Are? has the secondary title "Stories of Flo and Rose", and Rose's relationship to Flo proves to be the most important in the book. It's an odd one: they are close, and mean a lot to each other, and yet Rose never thinks of Flo as her mother, in spite of Flo marrying her father and taking over the care of her when Rose was still a baby. Flo is rarely referred to as a stepmother either, and when it happens it's mostly when Rose explains the nature of their relationship to an outsider. To Rose, Flo is just Flo. She makes a good job of raising Rose generally, but her complaints also lead to Rose's father beating his daughter up for the first time – something which then becomes a regular occurrence, until he dies when Rose is still a teenager. Another source of tension, though not as much as one could have expected, is that Flo clings to a way of life that Rose is desperate to get away from.

This collection was originally called The Beggar Maid after another of its stories, then renamed Who Do You Think You Are? after the last short story which takes place in West Hanratty, where Rose grew up in a slummy neighbourhood. I can't help thinking The Beggar Maid is a punchier title; after all, the double meaning of Who Do You Think You Are? has been explored in a well-known TV programme with the same title where famous people have a look at their family history (though Munro's collection probably predates it). Still, as the short story "The Beggar Maid" describes how a wealthy young man, Patrick, falls in love with Rose and what it leads to, this title does shift the focus away from Flo and West Hanratty, and Rose's relationships to various men prove less central to her than that to her stepmother. She has a few typically Munro-ian near-misses man-wise, but by this time I took it philosophically, and true enough, when Rose catches up with the same men later it proves that maybe they were not all that. Only once did I feel a bit sad when a relationship ended prematurely, on account of something that could easily just have been a misunderstanding.

Rose isn't always likeable, but she is believable, and Who Do You Think You Are? is well worth reading – though less because of Rose or even the colourful Flo than the beautiful way it's written. Vargas Llosa had other qualities, but I didn't admire his prose style much (maybe something was lost in translation); at my sceptical early stage of reading The Feast of the Goat, when I came to a particularly clumsy piece of exposition, I thought uncharitably: "I can't believe he won the Nobel Prize". No such thoughts come to mind when you read Munro. She deserved that prize.

The strange missing redemption arc of Boba Fett

There are Star Wars fans, judging by some YouTube comments, who have a Sith-like tendency to deal in absolutes. According to them, either a Star Wars film/series is a flawless masterpiece (the original trilogy) or complete rubbish (the sequels, as often as not). The Book of Boba Fett, the miniseries which aired in January-February on Disney +, wasn't as good as it could have been – I quite agree on this. But it's a far cry from finding something a little disappointing to claiming that because of Boba, you have no faith that Disney will ever be able to do anything right when it comes to Star Wars properties (in spite of The Mandalorian, which most fans approve of). There are irate fans who, apparently, disliked Boba so much they have lost interest in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series, because they're sure it will stink too. Here, to paraphrase Padmè, they are going down a path I can't follow.

I enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett but, like most reviewers, I did find it flawed and not as good as The Mandalorian. In fact, my views are in many ways so similar to what several YouTubers and others have already said, it's a little difficult to find something original to say about it. Maybe it will help if I approach the subject from a slightly odd personal angle – that of a villain-lover who, strangely enough, wasn't instantly smitten with Boba in the original trilogy.

When I first saw the original films as a kid, the character of Boba Fett barely made an impression on me. Sure, there was this guy standing around in cool armour, but I just saw him as an Imperial hanger-on, and didn't register that he was, in fact, an independent contractor (bounty hunter, to be exact). I didn't even commit his name to memory. It wouldn't have helped if I had – Boba Fett is not a name to strike terror into a half-Swede's heart (fett in Swedish means "fat", the noun, and Boba sounds a little like baby talk).

It was actually the appearance of Boba as a boy in the prequel Attack of the Clones that made me more curious about the character. Most fans more knowledgeable than me did not appreciate the brattish kid Boba, but I thought his mourning for his clone-father Jango Fett affecting, and I'm always interested in characters who are hostile to the Jedi for other reasons than an affiliation with the Sith or the Empire. Boba had a plausible reason to hate the Jedi, especially Mace Windu who cut off his dad's head. In the animated series The Clone Wars, this is explored further. But – and this is worth noting for those (and this includes me) who thought Boba in The Book of Boba Fett was too much of a sissy – Clone Wars Boba does have moral scruples, and a wish to find somewhere to belong. At the end of Clone Wars, we see him leading a group of bounty hunters and doing it ably enough, but still struggling when a maverick like witchy ex-Sith Asajj Ventress (who is starting to develop a conscience of her own) is thrown into the mix.

The Boba we see in The Book of Boba Fett, and as a side character in The Mandalorian, isn't that far removed from Clone Wars Boba. He's still hung up about his father – which is the main reason he wants his armour back from Din Djarin. He wants to find a tribe, a new family where he belongs (and ideally is the boss). However, even with these callbacks to the concerns of young Boba, there is still a transition from the hard-boiled persona of the original trilogy – the one who hissed "he's no good to me dead", and whose taste for disintegrations led to an admonishment from Darth Vader, king of badasses – to the softie in The Book of Boba Fett, who struggles to make even one decision which a mainstream Star Wars audience would find morally questionable. To make matters worse, The Book of Boba Fett was set up as a show about a villain, or at least an anti-hero. It started with a post-credit scene in The Mandalorian. Boba and his ally/buddy Fennec Shand march into Jabba's old palace, Boba kills the late Jabba's right-hand man Bib Fortuna and assumes Jabba's throne as the region's ruling crime lord. So in The Book of Boba Fett, we could expect him to do some crime-lording, right?

Wrong. Boba proves to have little taste for crime-lording. He seems to see his role more as that of a sheriff – the tributes he collects from the townsfolk he sees as his due for protecting them from external threats, not his own goons. Clearly, he hasn't quite fathomed how a protection racket works. And he won't deal in Spice (Star Wars equivalent of drugs) because "it kills our people". Since when are the citizens of dusty Tattooine towns his people? While I was into Boba's more humane approach at first (not torturing those guards proved to be a good move), his constant avoiding of the tough decisions a crime lord needs to make soon started to grate. If Boba Fett can't stomach this kind of life, why assume Jabba's throne in the first place? What did he have to kill Bib Fortuna for? Jabba's slimy second-in-command was a side villain I did notice and appreciate even as a child (though I had no idea his name was Bib Fortuna). And now he's dead, and for what? Justice for Bib!

You could argue, of course, that being stuck in the belly of a monster, facing the prospect of being slowly digested over millennia, would make even the toughest bounty hunter rethink his life choices. Then, once out of the Sarlacc Pit, Boba is eventually accepted by a tribe of Tusken raiders, for all the moral education that is likely to be. The Tusken raider part of the story was generally well received, but I wasn't too keen on it. Granted, you shouldn't judge a whole people by what we've seen of them so far in Star Wars, but I still thought them a strange fit for the "wise tribe close to nature who teaches our hero what really matters" role à la Dances with Wolves (and I have problems with the Dances with Wolves storyline anyway). In my view, the Sarlacc Pit and Tusken interlude aren't enough to explain the changes to Boba Fett's character.

My point, which I'm taking some time to reach, is that I can accept a villain redemption arc for Boba. But I would have wanted to see it play out. How about, instead of doing the "right" thing from the get-go, he learned that badassery was no longer satisfying enough for him by his experiences as a crime lord? He could start out tough and then slowly have a change of heart when faced with the consequences of his actions. Want him to turn against the Spice trade? Then let him see its ill effects at first hand – and us viewers, too. I still don't know why trading in Spice is so very bad. It's not enough to hint that it's "like drugs"; that's just lazy shorthand. I'll believe that Spice is the new heroin when I see it.

For all that, I appreciated The Book of Boba Fett's space western vibe. I squealed when I saw the cameo from my favourite bounty hunter Cad Bane (no softness or tribe-belonging for him), albeit looking very creepy in his live-action form, like the Trickster from the The Sarah Jane Adventures bathed in ink. The creators of The Book of Boba Fett are the same as for The Mandalorian, and they know their craft. It's a pity we didn't get a more satisfying arc for Boba Fett – but I'm still glad he's out of that Sarlacc Pit.

Predictions for The Gilded Age season two

Should I, to paraphrase the movie Mean Girls, stop trying to make The Gilded Age happen? Perhaps because it's airing on HBO and isn't as immediately accessible to a British or American viewership as Downton Abbey, there doesn't appear to be an awful lot of hype about it. Instead, costume-drama viewers seem a lot more interested in Netflix's Bridgerton. But I'm just back from my first trip to London in three years (well, OK, I travelled back last Sunday – but I'm still tired!) and going for the path of least resistance. I don't have much to say about Bridgerton anyway. It's frothy, escapist, not very action-packed, the ideal viewing if you have a cold, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Regency England (something the series, to its credit, acknowledged briefly in a parallel-universe-explaining scene in season one). The higher Regency society was no melting pot, and the Queen did not literally select the "diamond of the season" as if the season were some beauty pageant. This is pure fantasy, and should be enjoyed as such.

Back, then, to The Gilded Age. To be fair, in terms of action, there's not much more going on here than in Bridgerton. Only towards the end did it pick up the pace – and then, just as all the pieces had been moved into a promising pattern, the season was over (after nine episodes, not ten as I first thought it would be). The Gilded Age suffered from the same problem as late Downton series in that some storylines were dragged out just so the characters involved could have a "season arc". For instance, no-one really believed that Marian Brook's romance with Mr Raikes would come to anything, so that plot line could easily have been shortened, even if it meant having to give Marian something else to do for the rest of the season. For all that, I really liked this series – yes, more than Bridgerton – and now the preliminary introductions to the characters are over and done with there are many interesting ways it could go. In order to follow my old Downton tradition, I think I'll try some predictions, hopefully without spoiling too much of season one for those who have not yet seen it.

Mrs Chamberlain's son makes an appearance Romance seems likely to bloom between Marian and Larry Russell, but will it really be all plain sailing from here? This pairing is so obvious it could easily become boring if there are no other romantic options for these young leads. Marian has made friends with Mrs Chamberlain, a rich and kind woman who is nevertheless shunned by polite society because of her scandalous past. She has a son ("adopted", though he is in fact her biological son) whom we have yet to meet. It would lead to some intriguing developments if he were to take an interest in Marian. What would her aunts say? Aunt Agnes would be shocked, but she has a more pragmatic side, and in terms of wealth young Mr Chamberlain would be a catch for the penniless Marian. Marian herself would be favourably disposed towards the son of a friend. By not being an obvious "Mr Wrong", he could give Larry a run for his money.

Mr Russell does Marian a good turn The admirable George Russell is the kind of man who always pays his debts. Marian unwittingly helped him unearth a scheme to besmirch his good name, and now he owes her one. There's no guarantee he will help her with good grace. Russell is a great character, my favourite by far, but the viewer is still supposed to be a little wary of his ruthless streak. I can see Agnes Van Rhijn being reluctantly grateful to him for helping her niece out of some scrape, and him acknowledging her grudging thanks in a stiff "well, we're even now" way.

An English Lord for Gladys? It's pretty clear that the socially ambitious Bertha Russell is in part modelled on Alva Vanderbilt, which would make her daughter Gladys a parallel to Consuelo Vanderbilt. Consuelo married the Duke of Marlborough, a match fiercely promoted by her mother, but was famously unhappy in her marriage (and let everybody know it). We've already seen that Bertha did not consider a perfectly respectable young banker grand enough for Gladys. Maybe a titled Englishman is what she's looking for as a son-in-law. I don't think the dates match, regrettably, but otherwise one could imagine Bertha trying to secure a young Earl of Grantham for her daughter before he's snatched up by Cora instead. Anyway, I expect some members of the English aristocracy to make an appearance.

Bertha Russell and Agnes van Rhijn team up It may be too soon to expect this in season two, but consider this my standing prediction for future seasons as well. Sooner or later, it will happen. They are both hard-headed women, and will in time find some common cause (possibly involving the happiness of Marian and Larry). Bertha told Mrs Astor that she could prove a useful friend, but I can't really see these two women becoming really chummy – Mrs Astor is more likely to see the point of Bertha's husband (whom she has already conceded to be "a force to be reckoned with"). But Agnes and Bertha do have things in common, and if the situation is dire enough they could be brought to see it. As Agnes has been a bit of a disappointment this far, I think the character would benefit from moving out of her comfort zone.

We learn more about Peggy's ex I'm ashamed to say I can't remember what happened to Peggy's husband. Did he die? Or did her father bully him into accepting a divorce, and in that case, on what possible grounds? In any case, Mr Scott's behaviour over Peggy's marriage is baffling, to say the least. It's one thing if he thought she married beneath her, but she did marry – and yet he handled the whole situation as if she was living in sin. It's rare for a character in a Fellowes drama to behave completely irrationally and in a "stock character" (Stern Father) manner. Does Mr Scott know something about Peggy's hubby that we don't?

Battle of the butlers I suppose the rivalry between Church and Bannister, where the former apparently shopped the latter to his employer when he was earning a little on the side (though should we, and more importantly Bannister, really take Miss Turner's word for this?), will play out somehow. Not that I really want it to. I like them both. Can't they just be pals?