Reply to Alice Monroe has died, age 92

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[quote=Anonymous]I've read two of her books that I really enjoyed. I always write a brief note/review to myself after completing a book. Here's what I thought of the two I read.

The Beggar Maid:
Alice Munro's book, published in 1978, is best described as a collection of short stories that connect to create a novel. I wouldn't say that each short story/chapter would necessarily stand very well completely on it's own, but each story does focus on one major life event of the main character, Rose, and her step-mother, Flo. Taken all together, they feel like a novel in that the main characters develop through each story and the stories create a fairly complete picture of a life. However, there isn't the same pull of action throughout the work or closure that you would normally find in a novel, which keeps it feeling like short stories. Also the focus on one aspect of life in each chapter, like childhood friends, parent/child relationship, the life of a marriage, etc., remind the reader that these are short stories. I found it a very effective way to write this particular story and thought Munro did it much better than some other authors who've attempted it.

Lives of Girls and Women:
I picked this book up when I heard that Munro had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Munro is mainly known for her short stories and I think this is considered her only novel, though some of her short story collections are linked stories and might be considered a novel. This is a coming of age story about Del, a girl living in the small town of Jubilee, Canada. Each chapter has an episodic feel and I liked some sections more than others. Munro is great at tricking you into thinking a story is straightforward and simple and all of a sudden you realize that dark, depressing, or deep events are being revealed. I appreciate her writing a lot, but it isn't always comfortable.

[i]People's lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable - deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.[/i]

If you change "people's lives" to "Munro's writing", that sentence pretty much sums up how I feel about Munro's writing in her own words.

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