The New Yorker: Fiction · The New Yorker

André Alexis Reads Alice Munro

June 1, 2024·1 hr 39 min·8 clips

Deborah Treisman warns listeners about Munro's incredibly vivid description of an abortion procedure.

A tribute sets the terms. Deborah Treisman introduces the program as a special tribute to Alice Munro, who died in May at age ninety-two. Andre Alexis chooses the story, following the podcast's familiar ritual: the guest writer names the archival piece, then the reading takes over. The frame stays quiet. Treisman places Before the Change in The New Yorker in August of 1998, then steps back so Munro's story can do the work. The material is severe. The excerpt follows a daughter summoned into a room where her father is carrying out an intimate, disturbing procedure. Munro does not soften it. The narration stays close to the basin, the implement, the smell, and the daughter's attempt to hold herself together. Her father seems practiced, but his competence has a worn edge. The daughter begins to sense he may have wanted her nearby in case he collapsed. Madeleine is still there, too. Her weak, spiteful complaint about the missing ride adds another pressure to the scene, beyond the physical ordeal. The story builds through friction: ordinary domestic details beside clinical exposure, a familiar room made strange. Alexis honors Munro by choosing something this severe and letting it stand. The close returns to the podcast's editorial frame, with his fiction named and earlier New Yorker Fiction Podcast episodes mentioned. The episode is a memorial, but not a soft one. It presents Munro through late knowledge, family duty, bodily labor, and restraint that makes the shock harder to shrug off.

As heard by us

Andre Alexis honors Alice Munro with a stark reading of a daughter drawn into her father's hidden work.

Andre Alexis's tribute to Alice Munro returns to Before the Change, the 1998 New Yorker story he chose for a memorial episode framed by Deborah Treisman after Munro's death at 92.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A special tribute to Alice Munro, with Andre Alexis reading "Before the Change."

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The New Yorker: Fiction