A forged love letter sends a housekeeper on a quest across Canada when a cruel prank has unintended consequences.

In the title story, a prank involving forged letters sends practical housekeeper Johanna Parry across Canada toward a life nobody intended for her. Elsewhere, women and men look back at marriages, first mistakes, old desires and private shame, finding that memories can contain omissions as powerful as what it preserves.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is a masterly literary short story collection about love, deception, domestic life and aging. For readers seeking literary psychological stories and writing that combines irony with deep compassion, Munro remains exact, fearless and humane.

'Munro gives each of her stories the rich density of a compacted novel...triumphantly displays impressive feats of flexibility, always gracefully adapted to life's twists and turns' Sunday Times