Among the few critical works on Alice Munro's writing, this study of her short fiction is informed by the disciplines of narratology and literary linguistics. Through an examination of Munro's narrative art, Isla Duncan demonstrates a rich understanding of the complex, densely layered, often unsettling stories. In close readings of several stories from clearly defined stages of the writer's work, the various 'disarrangements' of Munro's narrative art are examined and their purposes and effects illuminated.