Robert McGill, "Something Something Alice Munro"

It’s December 3. Robert McGill, author of A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life, is just going to wait and see how long it takes you to notice.

How would you describe your story?

ROBERT MCGILL: It’s about two young people—a poet and a PhD student—whose friendship is highly bound up with their relationships to other people they love, including the writer Alice Munro. The story also features a rather unusual set of formal constraints. I wanted to write something that would pay tribute to Munro’s work, which I adore, and, at the same time, be unlike anything she’d write.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

RM: As someone who grew up just north of Huron County, Ontario, where Munro has spent most of her life, I long wanted to write a story about a young writer who meets her, but I never got around to it.

Then, last year, I decided to try writing a story with an overarching constraint governing every sentence. Once I realized that I could write my Munro story that way, and once I realized that the constraint would send things in a comic direction, the story came pouring out over the course of one weekend in a way was unprecedented for me.

What kind of research went into this story?

RM: I confess: I wrote a master’s thesis on Alice Munro. And I once met her in Bayfield, Ontario.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

RM: The short story holds the possibility of perfection. You can’t hope for a perfect book-length work; there are too many words for every phrasing to be exactly right. A well-known definition of the novel, in fact, is “a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” With the short story, there’s the glimmer of a chance that you can read (or maybe even write) one where nobody would want to change a word.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

RM: Visit me at robert-mcgill.com.

What's the best gift you've ever been given?

RM: My partner gave me a set of dumbbells just before the COVID pandemic hit. The gift was wonderful, the timing even better.

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