Review of the Short Story "Deep-Holes"

Let it be said right now that the best parts of the story Deep Holes, written by Alice Munro and published by the New Yorker are the two cartoons that happen to be on the same pages as this short story. Now that that is out of the way, on to the actual review.

In Deep Holes, Munro attempts to examine the decisions and acts of fate that create the human personality and determine one's future. The story focuses on Sally, the mother of a small family who ventures out for a picnic one day. During said picnic, Kent, the elder of Sally's two sons, falls into a large crevasse from which the story gets its name. Kent survives his fall but comes close to death and is forever changed by what happened to him that day.

This seems like an interesting enough premise, but the story is sloppily written, with little to connect the two major events of the story, the first being Kent's tumble and the second being Kent's future career as a beggar.

The story starts out engagingly enough, with the author conveniently providing the reader with some background through the thoughts of Sally. At one point, Munro provides a hint of Kent's Oedipal complex when Sally begins to breastfeed her young daughter and Kent becomes "crudely excited by the sight of Sally's breast" (67). This, in just one example of Munro's sloppy writing, is never followed up. Kent runs off with his little brother and ends up falling into one of many crevasses surrounding the picnic site. He survives the fall and is rescued by his parents. The story then shifts to the future, providing glimpses of Kent's life through Sally's eyes. Munro emphasizes how Kent has changed, "he acted older than his age now, less antic, more serene" (68). What Munro fails to do however, is connect Kent's accident in any satisfying way to his supposedly changed attitude.

The story continues like this, following Kent's life through high school and college until he disappears. After searching for him, Sally discovers through her daughter that Kent is now living in Toronto as the head of a house that houses bums. That is honestly the best way to explain it. Near the end of the story, Sally visits Kent in what is clearly supposed to be the pivotal and climactic scene in the story, but the plain back-and-forth that the two have falls flat.

What is most disappointing about the story is that it is told from Sally's perspective. If the author had written a similar story from Kent's point of view, it would have been markedly more interesting. The thought process that Kent went through from the time of his fall to his final encounter with his mother would have been fascinating to observe but Munro denies her readers this pleasure and leaves it up to the reader to guess.

All in all, the New Yorker should have tossed this story down a deep hole rather than publish it and run the risk that readers would miss the cartoons because they skipped the story after reading the first page.


Here is another review of the story: http://perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-yorker-deep-holes-by-alice-munro.html