TTributes flowed from across the literary world following the death in May of Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author Alice Munro at age 92. Munro is considered the perfectionist of the modern short story, but her many admirers are now grappling with a darker side to her legacy that is only just beginning to come to light.
In a heartbreaking essay published Sunday, Munro’s youngest daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner, now 58, said: Toronto Star In a related piece published by the paper, Skinner revealed that she was sexually abused from the age of nine by her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, Munro’s second husband, and that when she told Munro about the abuse years later, the famous author turned a blind eye and sided with his daughter’s abuser.
The revelation of long-held family secrets has upset Munro’s readers and colleagues, whose books often explore themes of women’s lives, complex family dynamics, sex, trauma and secrets.
Skinner said Fremlin, a cartographer who died in 2013, climbed into her bed and behaved inappropriately when she was nine years old. She also recounted that when they were alone as children, Fremlin would make dirty jokes, press her about her “sex life”, talk about Munro’s “sexual desires” and sometimes get naked and masturbate in front of her.
“At the time, I didn’t know this was abuse and thought I was effectively preventing it by looking away and ignoring what he was saying,” Skinner wrote.
Skinner says she was 25 when she first confided in Munro about her abuse by Fremlin, and had previously hesitated to do so for fear of her mother’s reaction. “All my life I have feared that you would blame me for what happened,” Skinner wrote in a 1992 letter. Part of the letter was Star.
Skinner says that what prompted her to confide in her mother was Munro’s reaction to a short story about a girl who commits suicide after being sexually abused by her stepfather: Munro asked Skinner at the time why the girl in the story did not confide in her mother.
But when Skinner revealed his own experiences with Fremlin, Munro was surprisingly unsympathetic: “After all, despite my sympathy for a fictional character, my mother did not feel the same way about me.”
“She was told it was ‘too late,’ that she loved him too much, and that if I expected her to deny her own needs, to make sacrifices for her children, to make up for the shortcomings of men, it was because of our misogynistic culture,” Skinner wrote. “She was adamant that what had happened was between me and my stepfather and none of her business.” Fremlin, meanwhile, denied any wrongdoing and shifted the blame onto Skinner.
Skinner said she and her family “acted as if nothing had happened” until she eventually became pregnant in 2002. After the twins were born, Skinner decided to cut off contact with Fremlin, who didn’t want her children near her, and Munro, who was worried about the inconvenience the move would cause her.
Skinner’s quiet estrangement began in 2004 when she The New York Times A story about Munro in which her mother praises Fremlin.
“I wanted to speak up. I wanted to tell the truth. That’s when I went to the police and reported the abuse,” Skinner recalled. “For a long time I had convinced myself that by bearing the pain alone I had at least helped my family, that I had done the moral thing, contributed to the greatest good of the greatest number. Now I was claiming my right to a fulfilling life and paying the burden of my abuse back to Fremlin.”
In 2005, Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and convicted without a trial after pleading guilty. He received two years’ probation, but Skinner said he was satisfied with the sentence because he wasn’t trying to punish him and didn’t believe he was still a threat to others, given his advanced age.
“What I wanted was a record of the truth, public proof that I didn’t deserve what happened to me,” Skinner wrote in the essay. She also wanted her story to “be part of the story people tell about my mother. I don’t want to see any more interviews, biographies, or events that don’t grapple with the reality of what happened to me and the fact that my mother, faced with the truth of what happened, chose to stay with her abuser and to protect him.”
But things didn’t work out that way: “Her mother’s fame led to a silence,” Skinner writes. Munro retired in 2013, and a few months later was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Many influential people became aware of something about my story,” Skinner wrote, “but they continued to support and add to the narrative, knowing it to be false.”
“Everybody knew,” said Skinner’s stepmother, Carol Munro. StarHe recounted a time several years ago at a dinner party when a journalist asked him about a rumor about Skinner, which he confirmed was true. (Robert Thacker, author of Munro’s acclaimed biography, said: The Globe and Mail Johnson said Sunday he was aware of the allegations about what happened to Skinner, with whom he had direct contact before the book was published in 2005, but refused to discuss them because he did not want to intrude on a sensitive family matter.
Skinner’s story flew under the radar, but now, with her essay sending shockwaves through the literary world, the narrative surrounding her mother is beginning to change.
“I know I’m not alone in feeling deeply shaken by what feels like a dramatic shift in our understanding of a man who shaped me and others as a writer,” Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca MacKay wrote in a series of posts on X reflecting on the recent news.
“There are many who knowingly deny that Alice Munro shared her life with a pedophile who abused her daughter, or who rush to say they never liked her work,” Canadian magazine writer and editor Michelle Saika wrote in a post on X. “It’s even harder to accept the truth that people who create transgressive art are also capable of brutal acts.”
“Alice Munro’s news is entirely and tragically consistent with the world she depicts in her stories: young people betrayed and thwarted by the adults who are supposed to care for them,” the American said. Posted by novelist and essayist Jess Rowe on X
American novelist and essayist Brandon Taylor expressed his gratitude to Skinner: “I am truly inspired by her courage,” he said in a series of posts on X, adding that her story “struck me personally as it parallels so many aspects of my own story and history.”
In a statement, Munro’s Books, founded by husband and wife Jim and Alice Munro and independently run since 2014, said it “unequivocally supports Andrea Robin Skinner in speaking publicly about her experience of childhood sexual abuse.”
“Like many readers and writers, we will need time to process this news and the impact it has on our connection to the Alice Munro works and store that we have all come to admire,” the statement added.
In a joint statement released by the Munro family, Andrea and her three siblings, Andrew, Jenny and Sheila, thanked the owners and staff of Munro Books “for acknowledging and respecting Andrea’s truth and making clear their desire to end the tradition of silence.”
Skinner said she never reconciled with her mother before Munro’s death, but she did reconcile with her siblings, who reached out in 2014 to seek understanding and healing together and to support her in going public with what would undoubtedly be a major shift in their mother’s reputation.
Meanwhile, Skinner clarifies that this isn’t about Alice Munro’s reputation: “I just really hope that this story isn’t about celebrities behaving badly,” she said. StarWhile some may be drawn to the work simply for its “entertainment value,” she added, “I want my personal story to focus on patterns of silence, tendencies to be silent, in families and in society.”