I gave myself two days to settle with this book before even attempting a review. Two days of thinking and reflecting and confirming the marvel that is this book. As one can tell from the title of the book, Munro focuses on the relationships between girls and women in this book and each chapter marked a new development for Del, the protagonist of this story.

Del is a precocious girl living first at the outskirts and then in the poor small town of Jubilee, Canada. Her mother writes in the paper and sells encyclopedias, and is considered an eccentric for her agnosticism, beliefs in women’s reproductive rights and other notions that of course must have been extremely “liberal” in a small and religious town in the 1940s, and her father is a fox farmer who lingers at the edges of the story for the most part.

Told in the first person and from Del’s point of view, we journey with her through her childhood and the characters that people her life and thoughts, her awakenings and conflicts and disasters and emerge with her at the end, fully nourished. The kind of story that grows and grows with each turn of the page, filled with brilliant understandings of life, death, spiritualit(ies)y, friendships and love.

One of the most exciting and fascinating aspects of this story is the town of Jubilee itself and the rich detail Munro furnishes it with. From its economic and recreational activities to the townspeople themselves, she creates such an intricate mesh, a breathing steaming town.
If you liked Toni Morrison’s [b:Sula|11346|Sula|Toni Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441578153s/11346.jpg|3207953], William Maxwell’s [b:So Long, See You Tomorrow|14276|So Long, See You Tomorrow|William Maxwell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390750749s/14276.jpg|1267189], Willa Cather’s [b:My Ántonia|17150|My Ántonia (Great Plains Trilogy, #3)|Willa Cather|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389151307s/17150.jpg|575450] or [b:The Neapolitan Novels|26828169|The Neapolitan Novels|Elena Ferrante|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1443412457s/26828169.jpg|46858867] of Elena Ferrante, then you’ll most likely like this one too. With this book Munro solidifies her place in my heart as one of my favourite writers, a great book. ( )

Chosen for our book group because of Munro's recent death, this was a fantastic read. I haven't read anything by her because I am not a fan of short stories and even though it could be argued this was not really a novel, it was more novel than a set of themed short stories.

The novel tells of the coming-of-age of Del, the narrator who is gradually revealed to us. The stories/chapters each detail a particular point in the growing up but also include all the details of small town life that are going on around Del and her family. We start with Flats Road where Del and her family live much to her mother's chagrin. The place is aptly named with Del's mother saying that they live at the end of Flats Road to make it sound as if they don't come from there. In this story we are introduced to the fact that Del's mother is a disappointed woman but one who has modern ideas that don't fit with the rest of her local society or family and who reminds me not a little of Mrs Bucket (pronounced Bouquet). This out of the way, small place is contrasted with the big city where Uncle Benny goes to rescue a little girl and who gets completely and utterly lost and can only come home, never getting to the address that he was searching for. Surely, this is a metaphor for their lives.

The third story, Princess Ida, shifts focus to Del's mother and being unfulfilled in terms of education. By this time, Del and her mother are living in Jubilee whilst Del's father and brother remain out on the edge of the country at the fox farm. Del's mother tries to break into the society where she feels she belongs but it appears desperate and she is ignored by the other women and eventually gives up. It is at this point that Del realises that she is embarrased by her mother and starts to consider her own place in the world.

For the women in this book there is a constant struggle between pride, shame, ambition and education versus sex, jobs and families. I loved the Aunts in the second story, Heirs of the Living Body, who were clever but trained to be domestic and were excellent at it. But sometimes, their cleverness slipped out as they discussed others,

The nimble malice that danced under their courtesies . . .
p49

The writing is sublime, smooth and flowing with all the detail of small towns beautifully brought to our attention. When talking about the woman who led the book club in Jubilee, Munro writes

She had a magnificent name she would serve up to people sometimes, like a scaly fish on a platter, all its silvery, scaly syllables intact, but it was no use, nobody in Jubilee could pronounce or remember it.
p92

In one sentence we learn of the town's difficulties with a foreign name, their attitudes towards it, and how its owner played on this.

I am pretty sure one of the questions that we will discuss will in some way focus on the different ways men and girls and women are portrayed in the book.

The men are frequently weak or failures - Del's dad and her brother and the failed fox farm, uncultured - Uncle Benny, abusive - Uncle Craig, violent and religious zealots, unattractive physically although interesting intellectually.

The women are often under-educated but clever, long -suffering, constantly butting up against society's expectations, spinsters and beautiful but very young. Del is a girl/woman who knows she wants more than Jubilee can offer and that she wants to be a writer. Marriage, babies, housework - she knows this is not for her and has seen the humiliation and shame this has brought on her mother. ( )

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 ( )

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. ( )