Alice Munro: Revelation about her daughter’s abuse shocks the literary world

TFollowing the death in May at age 92 of Canadian Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, credited with writing the contemporary short story, praise poured in from across the literary world. But Munro’s many admirers must now grapple with a darker aspect of her legacy that has just come to light.

In a heartbreaking essay by Andrea Robin Skinner, Munro’s youngest daughter, who is now 58 years old – published on Sunday in the Toronto Star along with an accompanying newspaper article – Skinner reveals that she was sexually abused by her stepfather, Munro’s second husband Gerald Fremlin, from the age of nine, and that the celebrated writer looked the other way and stood by her daughter’s tormentor when she told Munro about the abuse years later.

The revelation of a long-held family secret has shocked readers and colleagues of Munro, whose works often deal with themes such as women’s lives, complex family dynamics, sex, trauma and secrecy.

According to Skinner, Fremlin, a cartographer who died in 2013, got into her bed when she was nine and touched her inappropriately. She also described how during her childhood, when the two were alone, Fremlin would make lewd jokes, ask her about her “sex life,” describe Munro’s “sexual needs,” and expose himself and occasionally masturbate in front of her.

“I didn’t know it was abuse at the time. I thought I was doing a good job of preventing abuse by looking away and ignoring his stories,” Skinner writes.

Skinner says she first told Munro about her abuse at the hands of the Fremlin when she was 25. Before that, she had been hesitant to talk about it because she feared her mother’s reaction. “I was afraid all my life that you would blame me for what happened,” Skinner wrote in a 1992 Letter, parts of which she shared with the star.

According to Skinner, it was Munro’s reaction to a short story in which a girl committed suicide after being sexually abused by her stepfather that prompted her to reveal her torment to her mother. Munro asked Skinner at the time why the girl in the story had not told her mother about it.

But when Skinner told her about her own experiences with Fremlin, Munro reacted shockingly unsympathetically: “As it turned out, despite her sympathy for a fictional character, my mother had no similar feelings for me.”

“She said she was ‘told too late,’ she loved him too much, and our misogynistic culture was to blame for my expecting her to deny her own needs, sacrifice herself for her children, and make up for men’s mistakes,” Skinner writes. “She insisted that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.” Meanwhile, Fremlin denied any wrongdoing and placed the blame on Skinner.

Skinner says she and her family ultimately just carried on and “acted like nothing had happened” until Skinner became pregnant in 2002. After the birth of her own twins, Skinner decided to cut off contact with Fremlin – whom she did not want near her children – and Munro, who, according to Skinner, was more afraid of her own personal inconvenience that the move would cause her.

Skinner’s silent estrangement continued until she met a New York Times Story about Munro in which her mother praised Fremlin highly.

“I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to tell the truth. So I went to the police to report the abuse,” Skinner recalls. “For so long I had told myself that if I had left my pain alone, it would have at least helped my family, that I would have done the most moral thing and contributed to the greater good. Now I was claiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of the abuse upon myself and giving it back to Fremlin.”

In 2005, Fremlin was charged with sexual assault and convicted without trial, despite pleading guilty. He was sentenced to two years’ probation, an outcome Skinner said she was happy with because she did not want him to be punished, nor did she believe he posed a threat to others at his advanced age.

“I wanted to bring the truth to light, public proof that I did not deserve what had happened to me,” Skinner writes in her essay. She had also hoped that her story “would become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that did not grapple with the reality of what had happened to me and the fact that my mother, when confronted with the truth, chose to stay with my abuser and protect him.”

But that was not how it turned out. “My mother’s fame kept her silent,” writes Skinner. Munro retired in 2013 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature a few months later.

“Many influential people learned some of my story,” Skinner writes, “and yet they continued to support and add to a narrative they knew to be false.”

“Everyone knew,” Skinner’s stepmother Carole Munro told starhow he was asked by a journalist at a dinner party years ago about rumours about Skinner – and confirmed that they were true. (Robert Thacker, author of an acclaimed biography of Munro, told the Globe and Mail on Sunday that he was aware of the allegations surrounding Skinner and that Skinner had contacted him directly before his book was published in 2005. However, he declined to mention this because he did not want to go too far out on a limb in a sensitive family matter.)

Skinner’s story remained hidden from the public. But now that her essay has sent shockwaves through the literary world, the narrative about her mother is beginning to change.

“I know I’m not the only one who feels deeply unsettled by this hilarious shift in our understanding of a person who shaped me and others as writers,” Pulitzer finalist Rebecca Makkai said in a series of posts on X reflecting on the recent news.

“Many people reflexively deny that Alice Munro could have knowingly spent her life with the pedophile who abused her daughter, or are quick to say they never liked her writing,” Canadian magazine writer and editor Michelle Cyca wrote on X. “It’s harder to accept the truth that people who make outstanding art are capable of monstrous acts.”

“The news about Alice Munro is so completely and tragically consistent with the world she conjured up in her stories – all these young people who were betrayed and sabotaged by the adults who were supposed to care for them,” said American Novelist and essayist Jess Row posted on X.

American novelist and essayist Brandon Taylor expressed his gratitude to Skinner. “I am so impressed by her bravery,” he said in a series of posts on X, adding that her account was “personally devastating, as I recognize so much of my own history and past in her experience.”

In a statement, Munro’s Books, founded by Jim and Alice Munro but an independent company since 2014, said it “fully supports Andrea Robin Skinner in making her story of sexual abuse as a child public.”

“Like so many other readers and writers, we will need time to process this news and the impact it may have on Alice Munro’s legacy. We have previously celebrated her work and connection to the store,” the statement continued.

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’s Books for “recognizing and honoring Andrea’s truth and making their desire to end the legacy of silence very clear.”

While Skinner says she never reconciled with her mother before Munro’s death, her siblings have, who have tried to find understanding and healing together in 2014 and supported her public coming out, which will surely put their mother’s reputation in a very different light.

Skinner, for her part, has made it clear that Alice Munro’s reputation is not at stake here. “I just hope this story is not about celebrity misconduct,” she told starWhile some are interested only “for entertainment value,” she adds: “I want to focus so much on patterns of silence in my personal story, the tendency towards it in families and societies.”