Unfortunately, her latest collection of stories, ''Runaway,'' does not represent Ms. Munro's artistry at its height. Three overlapping stories (''Chance,'' ''Soon'' and ''Silence'') provide an affecting portrait of a woman named Juliet and the harrowing trajectory of her life, but most of the entries in this volume are more stilted affairs. Instead of assuming the organic, musical form of real life, they feel like self-conscious, overworked tales, relying on awkwardly withheld secrets and O'Henryesque twists to create narrative suspense.

But suspense and purity, which are a gift to the reader, present problems for the reviewer. Basically, ''Runaway'' is so good that I don't want to talk about it here. Quotation can't do the book justice, and neither can synopsis. The way to do it justice is to read it.