There is a housekeeper with "a frizz of red hair and a high freckled forehead, " just entering the dangerous territory of old maidhood, who unwittingly turns two teenagers' practical joke concerning letters and a man to her own stunning advantage. And a woman who, meeting up again with her childhood sweetheart, discovers important things about that long ago friendship. A lifelong philanderer finds the tables turned when he puts his wife into an old age home. A niece visiting her aunt and finding the overlarge family furniture installed in a too-small city apartment uncovers the secret of her aunt's life and its reverberations for her own. A woman, remembering an afternoon's wild love-making with a total stranger, realizes how the power of that encounter has both changed and sustained her through a lifetime.

"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" will be total pleasure for both Alice Munro's fans and the many new readers this collection should bring.