Ratings13
Average rating4.2
The debut novel from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “one of the most eloquent and gifted writers of contemporary fiction” (The New York Times). “Munro has an unerring talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.”—Newsweek Rural Ontario, 1940s. Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father’s fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women—her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother’s boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence. Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro’s unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.
Reviews with the most likes.
Munro is a big Canadian writer, mostly known for her short stories. This is the only novel she wrote, so naturally this is the book of hers I chose.
The book is a series of snapshots of a girl's coming-of-age in a town in rural Ontario during the 1940s. Her father breeds white foxes at the end of a dirt road, her mother sells encyclopedias to farmers while mourning her own ambitions, her family's boarder is gossiped about for being an unmarried woman. There's humor and wisdom yet also darkness in the way Munro portrays the mundanity of these small town characters. And threading through all the stories is the subtle story of girls and women, enduring or trying to overcome the sexist conventions of that time.
This is great writing. I enjoyed the quirkiness of the earlier stories (uncle Benny and his mail-in-bride) and the harsh reality of the later stories (the ending of Del's love story, what an education). Just the middle had maybe too much exploration of different religions.