Canadian writer Alice Munro’s daughter said that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child and that her mother was told but stayed with him, in a damning account published after the Nobel laureate’s death. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Canadian writer Alice Munro’s daughter said July 7 that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child and that her mother was told but stayed with him, in a damning account published after the Nobel laureate’s death.

Andrea Robin Skinner wrote in the Toronto Star that she was nine when, in 1976, “one night, while she (Munro) was away, her husband, my stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me.”

She wrote that when she was alone with Fremlin — who died in 2013 — he “exposed himself during car rides, told me about the little girls in the neighborhood he liked, and described my mother’s sexual needs.”

Ms. Skinner said that, when she was 25, she shared everything that had happened with Munro — but the acclaimed author decided to stay with Fremlin, whom she wed in the 1970s after her first marriage ended.

“She reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Ms. Skinner wrote of Munro.

“We all went back to acting as if nothing had happened. It was what we did,” she added.

At 38, Ms. Skinner said she took her allegations to the police after Munro complimented her husband in a New York Times interview. Fremlin pleaded guilty in 2005 to indecent assault.

“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me,” Ms. Skinner wrote.

“I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother,” she added.

Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, died at 92 in May. Her death prompted glowing tributes, including from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Victoria-based Munro’s Books, founded by the author, said in a statement it “unequivocally supports” Ms. Skinner in sharing her story of sexual abuse as a child.

“Along with so many readers and writers, we will need time to absorb this news and the impact it may have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and ties to the store we have previously celebrated,” it wrote, adding the shop had been independently owned since 2014.

A separate statement from the Munro family, also published on the Munro’s Books website, praised the shop’s owners for being “part of our family’s healing.”

“We wholly support the owners and staff of Munro’s Books as they chart a new future, and respectfully request that they not be asked or expected to answer questions about the Munro family,” it added.

Canadian author Alice Munro
| Photo Credit: AFP

Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author known for her mastery of the short story, has died at 92, her editor said.

Munro set her taut, acutely observed stories in the rural Ontario countryside where she grew up, focusing a stark lens on the frailties of the human condition.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 and the International Booker Prize for her body of work in 2009, Munro had suffered from dementia in recent years.

Also Read: Canada’s Alice Munro wins literature Nobel

Her editor Deborah Treisman and a longtime friend David Staines confirmed to AFP that Munro died late on May 13 at her care home in Ontario.

“She was the greatest writer of the short story form of our time. She was exceptional as a writer and as a human being,” said Mr. Staines.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge on X described Munro as a Canadian literary icon while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “the world had lost one of its greatest storytellers.”

“A true literary genius… her short stories about life, friendship, and human connection left an indelible mark on readers,” he said.

Despite her vast success and an impressive list of literary prizes, Munro long remained as unassuming and modest as the characters in her fiction.

“She is not a socialite. She is actually rarely seen in public, and does not go on book tours,” commented American literary critic David Homel after she rose to global fame.

That shy public profile contrasted with another Canadian contemporary literary giant, Margaret Atwood.

Like magic

Born on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, Munro grew up in the countryside. Her father Robert Eric Laidlaw raised foxes and poultry, while her mother was a small town schoolteacher.

At age 11, Munro decided she wanted to be a writer, and never wavered in her career choice.

“I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn’t have any other talents,” she explained in an interview once.

“I’m not really an intellectual,” Munro said. “I was an okay housewife but I wasn’t that great. There was never anything else that I was really drawn to doing, so nothing interfered in the way life interferes for so many people.”

“It always does seem like magic to me.”

Munro’s first story, “The Dimensions of a Shadow,” was published in 1950, while she was studying at the University of Western Ontario.

Munro was three times awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction, first for “Dance of the Happy Shades,” a collection of stories published in 1968. “Who Do You Think You Are” (1978) and “The Progress of Love” (1986) also won Canada’s highest literary honor.

Her short stories were often published in the pages of prestigious magazines such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Her last collection of work, “Dear Life,” appeared in 2012.

Critics praised her for writing about women for women, but without demonizing men.

Her subjects and her writing style, such as a reliance on narration to describe the events in her books, earned her the moniker “our Chekhov,” in reference to the 19th century Russian playwright Anton Chekhov – a term affectionately coined by Russian-American short story writer Cynthia Ozick.