A review by crazylady4
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

3.0

I am a bit stuck on how to review this book. Overall writing skill and style of the writer was great. Details without drowning in over explaining. However it is a coming of age story of a young girl whom I took awhile to eve figure out the name of. Did I perhaps miss it being a rather unique name? Did the author do this purposely? Each chapter felt like it's own short story separate from the rest and didn't flow between the two well. As the main character goes from story to story, managing questions of religion, friendship, education, love, sex, abuse, family, life. In a poor little town on Ontario. I found the flow between chapters choppy, often felt like the author assumed you knew details they hadn't previously examined fully. For the time period of the book taking place in, perhaps the older man taking her on long drives to abuse her and expose her was meant as an introduction to see and men in general, in today's eyes I did not see it as inferred at all to be wrong or inappropriate and how the main character was ment to proceed forward. Why not tell, why was she ok with it, it just sort of happened without seeming to explain its purpose in the story itself. Passage of time was hard to define except through her level in school....the final chapter did nothing but confuse me further to the point of not fully understanding where it left the characters as I turned the final page. It's deemed a Canadian classic maybe due to the female lead character or the authors change from short stories to a novel but I found it a challenge to keep my interest and probably wouldn't recommend it except that I feel Canadian authors seem to have this distinct difference in their writing that makes me want others to experience this book for mainly that reason. And also because the writing itself is good, the actually story failed to keep my interest.