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Lives of Girls and Women

Alice Munro
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Lives of Girls and Women

Alice Munro
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CANADIAN248 PAGESENGLISH
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Penguin Modern Classics (Canada)
Penguin Modern Classics (Canada)
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“Munro has an unerring talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.”
—Newsweek

“Munro brilliantly captures the initial tremors of this profound social transition.” 
—Toronto Star

“Superb.”
—The Independent

“In Munro's work, nothing can be predicted. Emotions erupt. Preconceptions crumble. Surprises proliferate.”
—Margaret Atwood

“Exact and unflinching.”
—The Guardian

“The Nobel laureate’s mastery of the miniature is clear in this early portrait of small-town life.”
—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

“She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion.”
—Jonathan Franzen

“She knows us better than we know ourselves. She always has.”
―Washington Times

“Reading Munro's cut-crystal prose is unadulterated pleasure.”
―Daily Telegraph

“A compelling portrait of the artist as a young girl.”
—Maggie Doherty, The Times Literary Supplement

“I love the stories of Alice Munro. There’s something journalistic in her attention to detail, and her ability to evoke a place.”
—Professor Susan Hartman, journalist, and author of City of Refugees

Overall rating: 4.105263 / 5 from 19 reviews.

AI Generated Review Summary

Summary topics

Review topics: ["book","written","writer","story","read","choice"].

Review highlights

Reviews

Lives of Girls and Women

"The Lives of Girls and Women deserved its Nobel prize. An emotional anthology of womanhood in rural Ontario, it is likely to strike a chord with many Canadians."

— Mikaila (5/5)

great

"Amazing book, would totally recommend to any lovers of literature and good prose"

— Floatychair (5/5)

Im sorry

"I'm sorry but it wasn't good. At times I was invested, but it was exceptionally boring for the most part. Yet, I was able to finish it somehow."

— BrookeCheyenne (2/5)

Classic

"really enjoyed this - great book"

— Joey (5/5)

Good

"This book was good. I would not have read it if Alice Munro was not a local to my area."

— Ally (3/5)

Dreadfully Boring

"I found this book dreadfully boring and that although it encompassed the mundane drudge of life in many Southern Ontario villages, it was completely depressing. I know Munro evidently is a popular and respected writer as she has won international recognition but her style is personally not for me."

— Katelynne (2/5)

Novel vs. collected short stories

"I'd read some Alice Munro years ago, and thought it would be a perfect choice for the Women's Resource Centre book club that I'm part of here in Brandon. The combination of books I read for the month of November, and consequently during NaNoWriMo was maybe not the best combination of choices. Each one was heavy and laden with dense material the require digesting, which is why it's taken me so long to write reviews lately. On the other hand, it's led my brain to go a few places it wouldn't have normally. It helped me think a little bit more about how I'd like 2014 to go compared to 2013. That can be a good thing right??? I like to let people wonder, and I like to watch, and observe. This is how I read Munro's book, as an observer, and someone listening to the stories and thoughts of others. These are qualities I put to work for me in my working life as well. It's a little like reading the book Gripped by Jason Donnelly, but without the cat or the sock. You can read my review of that book here, or better yet, just go read that book. Lives of Girls and women was like listening to a story my Grandma would have told. It was like being transported back to her time on the prairies in the 1930's. This was situated slightly later, and in north-western Ontario, but the feelings, sentiments and Canadiana that appeared throughout the book made me feel like I was a kid again, waiting for Grandma's bedtime stories. It's a group of short stories, and yes, they all feature some of the same characters. They happen to be arranged in chronological order in the book, and each story focuses on a theme. Why isn't it a novel then? For one, because it's brilliant, and secondly because you could read each story as a stand alone. They are each succinctly crafted and beautifully written. As an introduction to Munro's works, I would highly recommend starting with this book. I plan to read many more of her works in the future, and I hope you do the same."

— Naomi (4/5)

Great read !

"My first Alice Munro book, and it did not disappoint. Interesting concept and very wonderfully written."

— Leah (5/5)

didn't enjoy the style of how the story was told but. . .

"I thought the quality of writing was excellent. One thing that bothered me was that she left the ending with no real conclusion & up to the reader to ponder about."

— DJO (2/5)

Such a great read

"Beautiful, poignant and sad."

— Jennifer (5/5)

Q&A

  • Published date: Mar 02, 2021
  • Language: English
  • No. of Pages: 248
  • Publisher: Penguin Canada
  • ISBN: 9780735234659
  • Dimensions: 5.2" W x 0.64" L x 8.0" H
ALICE MUNRO grew up in Wingham, Ontario and attended the University of Western Ontario (now Western University), studying journalism and English. Her first collection of stories was published in 1968 as Dance of the Happy Shades, which garnered much acclaim and won the Governor General’s Literary Award for English fiction that year. Three years later, she published her only novel, Lives of Girls and Women. Over the next few decades, she published many more short story collections, including Who Do You Think You Are?; The Moons of Jupiter; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, from which a story was later adapted into the two-time Academy Award–winning movie, Away from Her; Runaway; and The View from Castle Rock. Her stories appeared regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review.

In 1978 Munro received her second Governor General’s Literary Award for Who Do You Think You Are? and her third in 1986 with The Progress of Love. In 2009 she won the Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work. Her final story collection, Dear Life, came in 2012, and the next year, the same year she retired from writing, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, hailed as the “master of the contemporary short story.” Munro has also been the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the W.H. Smith Award, two Giller Prizes, several Trillium Prizes, the Jubilee Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, among many others.

Munro died in Millbrook, Ontario, in 2024.

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