Munro is a master of the difficult art of the short story. In each collection that I have read of hers, a theme runs through the individual snapshots, creating a coherent whole in the book. Too Much Happiness follows this trend, tying love and loss together with the role of women in western (particularly Canadian) society. Each story in this collection is brilliant in its own right, with personal favourites including the dream-like narratives built on strange events becoming acceptable, like Wenlock Edge and Some Women. The title story is strangely the weakest (despite its amazing subject matter, the 19th Century mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky), but only because it doesn't thrive on Munro's brilliant sense of character and use of event as the other stories do.

Free Radicals, my personal favourite about a widow confronted with a murderer in her home, will be remembered for a long time.