Lives of Girls and Women

This narrative by Del Jordan tells of her passage through the many phases of growing up in the 1940's & 1950's

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Alice Munro's first collection of linked stories traces Del Jordan's uneasy passage through adolescence

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One of the most vivid portrayals of female adolescence in modern fiction, Alice Munro's first, and only, novel revealed her to be a writer of exceptional skill and empathy. Originally published in 1971, Lives of Girls and Women traces one girl's journey from childhood to womanhood in a series of linked and retrospectively told stories. Having escaped from the small Ontario town of Jubilee to become an author, Del Jordan recalls the seemingly insignificant events that marked her awkward transition into the adult world. With acute self-awareness, she relives her childish dreams of fame, suffers embarrassment at the hands of her encyclopedia-selling mother, endures the humiliation of her body's insistent desires, and attempts desperately to fall in love. Western Canadian actor Judy Mahbey conveys the emotional resonance of this classic work by Canada's most celebrated prac??titioner of the short story. A three-time winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, Alice Munro ha

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The only novel from Alice Munro-award-winning author ofThe Love of a Good Woman--is an insightful, honest book, "autobiographical in form but not in fact," that chronicles a young girl's growing up in rural Ontario in the 1940's. Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father's fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women-her mother, an agnostic, opinionted woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence. Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.