A really interesting story. Very slow, but still memorizing with amazing metaphors and a beautiful poetic writing style. ( )

Alice Munro is known as a master of the short story, but in a note at the beginning of this book she called it a novel, "autobiographical in form but not in fact." Structurally, it consists of what appear to be short stories, roughly in chronologically order, narrated by Del, telling the story of her life, her family, and her town.

Briefly, as follows, the stories are:

THE FLATS ROAD--Del and family are living out of town on a fox farm This story focuses on Uncle Benny's disastrous marriage.
HEIRS OF THE LIVING BODY--Del's mother's failure to be accepted by her father's family: "My mother went along straight lines. Aunt Elspeth and Auntie Grace wove in and out around her, retreating and disappearing, and coming back...."
PRINCESS IDA--Again the focus is on Del's mother, who becomes an encyclopedia salesperson. "I felt the weight of my mother's eccentricities as something absurd and embarrassing about her--the aunties would just show me a little at a time." Del, her mother, and her brother are now living in town while her father is out at the fox farm.
AGE OF FAITH--Del wants to know if there is a god. "Sometimes I thought of the population of Jubilee as nothing but a large audience for me...."
CHANGES AND CEREMONIES--Del and her friend Naomi are becoming interested in boys and the mysteries of sex. In Jubilee, "reading books was something like chewing gum, a habit to be abandoned when the seriousness and satisfactions of adult life took over. It persisted mostly in unmarried ladies, would have been shameful in a man."
LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN--As a teenager Del is sexually molested by the boyfriend of her mother's boarder.
BAPTIZING--In high school, Del has boyfriends; loses her virginity.
EPILOGUE: THE PHOTOGRAPHER--A story imagined by Del, who has failed her college scholarship exams, but who wants to be a writer. "And no list could hold what I wanted, for what I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together--radiant, everlasting."

4 stars ( )

La vida de la gente, en Jubilee como en todas partes, era aburrida, simple, asombrosa e insondable… cuevas profundas cubiertas de linóleo de cocina...Bastan estas pocas palabras para reconocer el talento de una espléndida narradora y colarse en la vida de Del Jordan, una chiquilla que vive con sus padres en el pueblo de Jubilee...Del empieza contando su día a día, su relación con la familia, los vecinos y los amigos, y pronto descubrimos que esa niña sabe observar el mundo y sacar buen provecho de lo que ve: compadece la poquedad del padre, admira el arrojo de la madre, que deja la granja para dedicarse a vender enciclopedias por los alrededores, y comprende que tarde o temprano llega el momento en que hay que elegir entre una risueña mediocridad –hogar, iglesia, matrimonio, hijos- y otras opciones más interesantes y arriesgadas.

Alice Munro has been on my TBR list for years so I was pleased when 'Lives of Girls and Women' came up as a bookclub read. There is no doubt the writing is excellent and the author is very observant. The stories are narrated by Del, a young girl, as she transitions from childhood to adulthood. The subjects and Del's POV as she tells the stories, change as she gets older. I love the way the author managed to pull off this very skilled transition. It does make the reader feel as if they are actually growing up with Del. Having said that, I found some of the stories quite long and the pacing quite slow in places. Some characters jumped to life on the page whereas others I didn't care for at all, which is why I gave it 3 stars. While I would read like to more by Alice Munro, I won't be rushing to do so. ( )

I had a hard time getting in to this story. It describes a world I've only read about, rural Canada before I was born. I was also put off by the negativity. The characters generally had negative views of the world. Whenever they could have seen something positive they instead found something negative to focus on. Eventually I was glad I persisted as this is a one of a kind that is worth the time.

We follow a central character, Del Jordan, a young girl growing up in a rural Canadian town. We also see, through Del's eyes, her mother, Ada. Indeed one way of interpreting what happens is Del slowly but surely rejecting Ada. Father and brother are out of town living on a failing fox farm and are much less central to the story. Ada is the town curmudgeon who rejects the religiosity of those around her. Ada's independence is through her work as a traveling encyclopedia sales person. She clearly sees her daughter as her chance to get beyond life in this closeminded society.

But Del has other ideas. As a young girl she explores the different churches and religions of her town. She secretly attends different services and examining the types of people she finds and the practices that each hold dear. She is not looking to join any of them but finds them all in some way comforting. As she gets a little older the experimentation and the rejection get a little more pointed. We witness Del's curiosity about bodies and sensuality and eventually smoking and drinking. This is where we I began to fell like a voyeur as Del explains her thoughts about topics rarely communicated to anyone else and even less described in detail in literature. Del is the smart girl in all her classes and Ada clearly expects her to win a scholarship and be able to move beyond the confines of the town, Del teams up with the top boy in school but eventually is drawn to someone she finds while attending Baptist services. He wins her heart and slowly but surely introduces her to sex. She's a willing partner. She doesn't work hard on the exam needed to get a scholarship and not surprisingly does not win one. Frank wants to marry her but wants her to first to be baptized which is a bridge too far for Del. It's a deal breaker for Frank.

I learned that this novel was really a cycle of short stories. This probably explains something strange. At two different points we are introduced to the same character as if we did not already know about her. At first I dismissed it as poor editing. Maybe it was done to keep each chapter more like a short story.

There's a epilogue where we learn than Del has become a writer. It almost felt like it was a way for Munro to introduce a little noise about who in her real life these characters were based on. It did not feel connected to the rest of the novel. ( )