That picture of Munro, who died in Could at age 92, shattered on Sunday.
The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood wrote in an e mail that she was “blindsided” by the revelations. Whereas she had realized a bit about the reason for the household rift a few years in the past, from one among Munro’s different daughters, she by no means knew the total story till she learn Skinner’s account.
“Why did she keep? Search me,” wrote Atwood of Munro’s determination. “I believe they have been from a technology and place that shoveled issues underneath the carpet.”
She added, “You notice you didn’t know who you thought you knew.”
On social media, a cascade of writers and journalists, together with Lydia Kiesling, Brandon Taylor and Jiayang Fan, expressed shock and heartbreak on the information. Others, together with the novelist Rebecca Makkai, questioned whether or not any longer it will be potential to divorce Munro’s transcendent writing, which sometimes explored tumultuous home circumstances and sudden estrangements, from her troubling conduct.
“These revelations not solely crush Munro’s legacy as an individual, however they make the tales that have been, looking back, so clearly about these unfathomable betrayals mainly unreadable as something however half-realized confessions,” Makkai mentioned in an e mail. “To me, that makes them unreadable in any respect.”
Skinner wrote that the abuse started when she was 9 years outdated and went to go to her mom and stepfather, Gerald Fremlin. He climbed into mattress along with her, Skinner wrote, and sexually assaulted her. She informed her stepmother, Carole Sabiston, who informed Skinner’s father, Jim Munro. He determined to not inform his ex-wife, Alice. Skinner wrote in The Star that Fremlin continued to show himself to her for years.
