Alice Munro died this week. A master of the short story, Munro garnered many literary awards over the years, but her most notable win was when she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.

I had not read any of her books until I did the course “The Short Story” while pursuing an English degree at York University. One of her books of short stories, Who Do You Think You Are, was one of several textbooks for the course.

I became fascinated with Munro’s writing. Her stories, mainly set in small rural towns, were about simple, mundane topics, but she wrote about them powerfully. One of her stories (not included in the text) captivated me. The Bear Came Over the Mountain tells the story of the wife of a professor who developed Alzheimer’s and lost her memory to the point where she no longer knew him. She had a brief stay at a retirement home and quickly became attached to one of the male residents, convinced he was her husband. The poor professor tried his best to cope with the situation. The story jarred me and made me realize how devastating and hopeless Alzheimer’s can be. As I hear more and more about friends, acquaintances, and family members developing this disease, the story seems quite apropos. The literary world will miss Alice Munro.