Accident

She meant to go on and tell him what the doctor had said.

At the outset, “Floating Bridge” seems like it’s going to be a typical cancer battle story of the sort that seems almost required in a collection of contemporary stories. Jinny has just left an appointment with her oncologist, and has been collected by her husband who is setting up a sickroom–”temporarily, though nobody said so”–in their house. I thought I knew what to expect: the strained relationships, the avoidance of the unavoidable topic of death, the brave struggle. Better written than usual, because written by Alice Munro, but still a well-worn path.

How wrong I was! Though Jinny’s cancer is central to the story, it is hardly central to the plot. Instead, “Floating Bridge” is hijacked by the picaresque if minor misadventures of her husband Neal, the girl Helen who has been hired to help at home, and Helen’s foster brother Matt. What seemed to be the expected arc of the story is undone by random and mundane events, with Jinny quite literally along for the ride.

The cancer, and a glimmer of news from the oncologist, never leaves entirely, but it is elbowed roughly to the background. Whenever Jinny is on the verge of talking to her husband about her conversation with the doctor, something–the quest for Helen’s shoes, the barking dogs and overly-hospitable foster parents at Helen’s home, the arrival of Matt–interrupts. And in the end, alone in her reflections, Jinny embraces the interruptions with “a lighthearted sort of compassion.”

From the writer’s perspective, what is marvelous about “Floating Bridge” is how Munro tells two stories simultaneously: the misadventures on the trail of Helen’s good shoes, and what could have been a conventional medical story about Jinny. The first story, told with a winking good humor, contrasts sharply with the second, which is almost silent but ties the whole together. Plot and theme are pulled apart, and then gently woven back together, which gives a surprising lightness to what could otherwise have been a grim tale.