Lives of Girls and Women

Rating:
Summary: A classic coming of age story with a twist.
Review: Alice Munro is truly the master of the short story. "Lives of Girls and Women" deserves to be on everyone's list of must-read books. Munro is an exceptionally talented writer, one who can take ordinary situations and turn them into something wonderful. Here, she presents a traditional coming of age story, then spices it up with her own unique brand of dry, subtle wit and a host of zany characters. In "Lives," we follow Dell Jordan from childhood to young adulthood as she struggles with her identity in a small town in southern Ontario. Along the way, we meet many colorful characters, including Dell's Baptist boyfriend, her social outcast mother, a suicidal music teacher, and a lecherous friend of the family. "Lives" is more of a collection of short stories than a novel, but each story is like a puzzle piece. In the end, each piece fits together to create a massize jigsaw puzzle of Dell's life. I have read "Lives" three times, and it is one of my favorite books - addictive, humorous, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: timeless
Review: I first read this book when I was 15, for an high school english class, and have returned to it many times since. Munro is a deceptively simple writer whose style is subtle, witty, and rings of truth. After many reads, I still find something new each time I pick Lives of Girls and Women up. Another Munro favorite: The Beggar Maid. Fantastic writing and use of the short story form.

Rating:
Summary: Wryly observed and poignant
Review: This is the first book I've read by Alice Munro, and I've found it to be really impressive, and I'm definitely going to seek out other writing. She's undoubtedly good.

Munro's coming-of-age story resonates with a real sense of truth and has important things to say about the experience of women during the 40s. The main character is torn between her own passions and intelligence, and the guide of her likeable oddbod intellectual mother, and the conventional house-wife role that her best friend Naomi so vigorously adopts. It's an age-old predicament of most heroines - her inner sensibilites vs. what is commonly acceptable - but its wry observations and emotive language sets the novel apart. Munro's frank approach to sex is also refreshing.

Rating:
Summary: Great literature - Munro is a master structuralist
Review: What an amazing book! This not merely a good book for middle-aged women, or good instruction for girls, or any such claptrap. To label Munro as good "women's lit" is demeaning to women and demeaning to "The Lives of Girls and Women." (Plus it makes men who enjoy reading her a bit funny.) It's a great book! In any category!

Munro is a master of characterization and narrative structure. Del's description of her mother, for example, reveals: (1) Del's feeling of discomfort at her own place within Jubilee's hierarchy and environment; Del wants to fit in, and her mother embodies the eccentric within her own self. (2) Del's mother's strengths, pulling herself from abject poverty, putting herself through school, starting her own business in conservative postwar rural Canada - this woman evokes our admiration, despite the disgust of our narrator. It's these multidimensional portraits that makes Munro so great - yes, a character (Del's mother) can earn our admiration, disgust, and pity all at once...

Then in the building of conflict, Munro ALWAYS surprises us. Every scene is fresh, new, interesting, every culmination of conflict resolves in ways we would never expect. Take the time when Del was being molested by her mother's boarder's boyfriend. One day she goes off with him in his car out to the country, and we're expecting some "Bastard Out of Carolina" child-raping exploitation and subsequent weepy victim hood. But Munro makes a left at the light, has the man simply masturbate in front of the child, who for her part is excited, charmed, and repelled by the sight and is grateful to be introduced to the mystery of the penis.

And lastly, Munro refuses to depict her women in the same, old tired way. Her women are not dragged around by the hand by handsome strangers, as they so often are in movies. Her women are not victims of rape, incest, or peer pressure, as in way too many contemporary novels. No, Munro's women are real. They have drive, ambition, and a deep desire to be seen as people.

Definitely one of my favorite books, ever.