Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer. Although she wrote one novel in which was published in 1971 entitled Lives of Girls and Women she prefers to write short stories. In an interview for Canadian Fiction Magazine she was quoted as sayingI don't see that people develop and arrive somewhere. I just see people living in flashes. This is why in addition to this one novel, she has had another seven books published and they have all been collections of short stories. Born on July 10, 1931 in Ontario, she had her first short story published in 1950. The majority of her short stories are set in southwestern Ontario. A constant theme Munro focuses on in many of her works of fiction is female protagonists that have problems they must deal with as they are struggling with life discoveries. .
In reading several of Munro's works that theme of discovery becomes clear as the plot of those stories develops. In An Ounce of Cure the story begins discussing a young girl. As the story continues to develop we see the young girl discover love in the form of a boy named Martin Collingwood. Unfortunately for the young girl Martin soon breaks up with her and moves on to another girl. Through out the rest of the story our narrator deals with the pain of that loss. She even considers overdosing on painkillers at one point. Towards the end of the story she gets drunk while baby sitting and must call on her friends for help. Unfortunately the owners of the home she is in come home before she can get completely over her debauched state. Due to this she is caught in the act. Tales of this episode travel quickly through out the community leaving her social life almost nonexistent for a number of years. Although she suffered through the events of that Saturday night and the effects that it had on her family and friends and her social life she was able to learn from the affair. She learned that life doesn't just turn out a certain way.