Alice Munro often writes about ordinary people in small town Ontario, where she grew up. She said, "People's lives, in [my home town] as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, unfathomable—deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum." And she said, "I am at home with the brick houses, the falling-down barns, the occasional farms that have swimming pools and airplanes, the trailer parks, burdensome old churches, Wal-Mart, and Canadian Tire. I speak the language."