Munro has stated that she has been influenced by many writers, including Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, Joyce Carol Oates, William Maxwell, and John Updike. Munro's rite of passage for the daughter in "Walker Brothers" is somewhat similar to the main character's dilemma in Katherine Porter's "Theft". Porter's style is similar to Munro's in its simplicity and in the oblique manner in which the killing blow of the story is dealt. In "Walker Brothers Cowboy", the daughter's childhood does not end by some sudden, sordid occurrence such as an affair, but by a mere hint at her father's past life and a tacit agreement to remain silent about the past.

Similarly, the main character in Theft has her purse stolen—but it is not the purse that drives the story. The killing blow in this case is instead delivered...