Jonathan EmmesediAlice Munro's "Lives of Girls and Women" impressed me.
Whether one thinks of it as a set of linked short stories or as novel, the book clearly belongs to that line of North American fictions representing slices of small town life of which Sherwood Anderson's "Winesberg Ohio" is a notable early example.
Munro's work includes sharp observations of female friendship, mother daughter relations, and the limits of provincial cultural life. One story depicts a middle aged man engaged in unsolicited sexual display in front of the young female protagonist; this scene is at once utterly grotesque and totally unforgettable.
I'd strongly recommend "Lives of Girls and Women" . Unfortunately, you will almost certainly not be as lucky as me when I picked up my Penguin copy for a dollar!
#Books #ShortStories #AliceMunro #CanadianLiterature #Fiction #NorthAmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish
Of Bookish Things