Vandals

by Alice Munro

“Vandals” first appeared in The New Yorker in 1993 and in Munro’s story collection Open Secrets in 1994. This short story was also published in Selected Stories.

The story takes place in the rural town of Dismal at the property of Ladner, a hermetic taxidermist who has built a private nature preserve on his wild land. Eventually Bea Doud, a woman ruled by her relationships with men, moves in with Ladner and the story begins many years later when Ladner is in the hospital in Toronto and Bea calls upon Liza, their previous neighbor who lived next to them as a child, to look in on their old house during a snow storm.

Genres: Short Stories

22 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 1994

About the author

Collections of short stories of noted Canadian writer Alice Munro of life in rural Ontario include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) and Moons of Jupiter (1982); for these and vivid novels, she won the Nobel Prize of 2013 for literature.

People widely consider her premier fiction of the world. Munro thrice received governor general's award. She focuses on human relationships through the lens of daily life. People thus refer to this "the Canadian Chekhov."

(Arabic: أليس مونرو)
(Persian: آلیس مانرو)
(Russian Cyrillic: Элис Манро)
(Ukrainian Cyrillic: Еліс Манро)
(Bulgarian Cyrillic: Алис Мънро)
(Slovak: Alice Munroová)
(Serbian: Alis Manro)

Reviews

[Dolors · Rating 3 out of 5]

A non linear story that opens with the death of Ladner, an eccentric man who spent his life building a sort of natural history museum using his skills as a taxidermist in the hills nearby his house.
His partner Bea, a former teacher, is presented as a woman who likes a "challenge" and she enters into a relationship with Ladner that is unbalanced from the start. He mocks, taunts and verbally abuses her, displaying his dominance with glee and pretended indifference. Yet she sticks with him until he passes away from heart disease.
Two kids, whose mother died years ago and whose father neglects them, live in the house opposite and take to play in Ladner's property and the four of them become an unorthodox family.

Years later, Liza, one of the kids, now a married woman, goes back to Ladner's house after his death and vandalizes what's left of the furniture, stuffed animals, crockery and walls of the dinning room. She's converted to Christianity after some "wild years" in her teens.

As usual, the reader needs to read between the lines of Munro's incisive prose. Nothing is made obvious, only subdued hints here and there provide the remaining pieces to the monstruous puzzle, one that is better not to recompose. Chilling and thought-provoking.

[Sharon]

CW: sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, adult/minor relationship

In the wake of the abuse allegations reported against Alice Munro's second husband by her daughter, I chose to read this story. It contains only veiled references to abuse, but in poignant moments that directly emphasize the position of power Ladner has over the children.
As a companion, I also read the essay "Locking the Door": Self-deception, Silence, and Survival in Alice Munro's "Vandals" (which I can honestly say I found more interesting than the story itself). It's a very pointed analysis that is made more significant post-author revelations.

I have to say that, even if this information about Munro hadn't come out, I probably would not have become a big reader of her work. I can definitely see the appeal for its very literary qualities, but it's not quite my thing.

[Anita · Rating 1 out of 5]

Based on what we know today, this story cannot be read with anything but revulsion. The artist cannot be separated from the art because the horrific, real life abuse that occurred is what informed the art. I do not see how Munro's reputation can ever be viewed in the light it once was.

[Ann Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

TRIGGER WARNING: SA
read, read again, read a third time. the girls who get it, get it

[Kunal Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Vandals” by Alice Munroe formulates an interesting set of characters and themes but is stifled by its format of short story. It’s clear what the main point is: Bea and Liza are consumed and trapped in the orbit of men. They adapt their lifestyles and personalities to be amicable to their conditions. Liza’s free spirit clashes with her pious, religious husband and church. Bea’s feels caged and docile with her genial first husband. She quietly accepts Lander’s verbal abuse and explicitly states her desire to be consumed by his larger will / insanity. We have these three-dimensional characters that could have potentially interesting character arcs, but then the story just ends.
Munroe subtly reveals Lander’s abused Liza and Kenny as children. It’s a heart-breaking paragraph that recontextualizes a lot of Lander’s darker and unexplainable behavior earlier in the novel. It’s genuinely hard to stomach. We know the result of Bea and Lander’s sundered relationship with Kenny and Liza. We also know they had a fantastic and wonderful childhood together. Muroe stirs a poison into Liza’s moving retelling of her life story, and it hits like a truck. The most emotional and effective line in Vandals is ‘”Cedar,” said Liza. “You’ve got to know a cedar. There’s a a cedar. There’s a wild cherry. Down there’s a birch […] it had letters carved in it, but […] they look like any old blotches now.” Warren wasn’t interested. He only wanted to get home.’ It hurts witnessing Liza’s quiet anguish and melancholy from the perspective of an ignorant reflector. It’s amazing that I can feel undercurrents of complex character from such a detached perspective. I don’t think Kenny simply died in a car accident. I’m certain his own mental anguish manifested in self-destructive behaviors that lead to his violent death.
I also really dislike this finale. It’s tragic but it feels like an incomplete moment or story. Munroe’s daughter was sexually abused by her husband throughout her childhood to which Munroe kept silent. This makes the story ring hollow. Either it’s a tepid acceptance of sexual abuse, highlighting that it happens and that we can’t do anything about it (how Munroe conducted her own life), or the entire story oozes with hypocrisy. Either way, it’s very evident that there’s no broader call to action or decisive answer implied or stated in the finale which made this whole experience feel like a perverted exercise in misery.

[Shirley Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many layers…

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Ladner had not the least premonition of death …” Maybe, but what really happened, who knew, and when? As with all Alice Munro stories, there is a lot to chew on here. Strange and intriguing.

[cleo de cinq à sept]

reading this in the context of alice munro's life and her daughter's abuse. it's beautiful, this story, written in the perfection only munro could write it with. but it's marred by the fact that munro failed her own daughter. munro expounds the feminine condition in its pathetic passivity in the patriarchal stranglehold, so to speak, like Beauvoir does, but it's not an excuse for her inaction against sexual abuse which thrives on silence and normalisation. in fact, Beauvoir relishes in the fact that it is not in woman's 'essential' nature to be passive and controlled, that woman can fight out of this. the theme of 'nature' in this story is compelling and i fear that Alice Munro reinforces in this story that it is in woman's unavoidable nature to "live in a man's insanity".

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[Areeb Zaheer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A soul gripping tale.

[Martha Heffernan]

eng 250 short story

[aletris · Rating 3 out of 5]

tek diyebileceğim bir insanın kendi tecrübesi olmasa böyle bir eser yazamayacağı. gayet tabii, kendisi bea neyse oydu. kızının belki böyle bir vandallık yapabileceğini biliyordu. kendi hayatına yedirdiği davranışıyla büyük bir tezatlık yaratan bu öykü, yazım dili olarak beğenmiş olmama rağmen tüm olanları öğrendikten sonra sadece iğrenç ve korkunç bir okuma deneyimi sundu.