Reviews

The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose by Alice Munro

martinis's review against another edition

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4.0

Splendido.

lasiepedimore's review against another edition

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3.0

Puoi trovare questa recensione anche sul mio blog ---> La siepe di more

Ero molto curiosa di conoscere (letterariamente parlando, s'intende) Alice Munro, premio Nobel per la letteratura nel 2013. Ci ho messo due anni abbondanti prima di leggerla (sì, sono una di quelle persone che puntualmente non conosce i vincitori del premio Nobel per la letteratura), ma alla fine è venuto anche il suo momento.

La prima cosa che mi sento di dire su Alice Munro è che ha una prosa molto garbata: riesce a comunicare anche le sensazioni più sgradevoli con grande equilibrio, capacità descrittiva e oggettività. La Munro non enfatizza, si limita a riportare pensieri, sensazioni ed emozioni e questa semplicità colpisce il lettore come un maglio.

Peccato che, per quanto mi riguarda, non tutti i racconti (e sul fatto che sia una raccolta di racconti tornerò dopo) abbiano avuto la stessa forza narrativa: alcuni mi hanno tenuta incollata alla pagine e sembrava che raccontassero qualcosa di me, mentre altri li ho percepiti più lontani (ma forse è solo un problema di esperienze diverse).

Infine, Chi ti credi di essere? si presenta come una raccolta di dieci racconti, ma sembra più un romanzo. I racconti, infatti, sono legati tra di loro più dei capitoli di certi romanzi e i balzi temporali tra racconto e racconto quasi non si sentono, o comunque sono funzionali a un continuum narrativo.

Leggerò certamente qualcos'altro di questa autrice: ho la sensazione di non aver incontrato la sua opera migliore. In ogni caso, mi ha incuriosito abbastanza da approfondire con altre letture.

nutmegger's review against another edition

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4.0

This is categorized as short stories, however, they flow so seamlessly together that it reads more like a novel. Rose's story of her life moves out and away from her humble beginnings, only to bring her back to an understanding of her Mother.

proudtobeabookaholic's review against another edition

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2.0

I'm afraid I didn't like this as much as other books I've read by Alice Munro. I didn't care much for Rose, the main character, or anyone else for that matter.

I've been listening to an audiobook, and it's taken me a while to get through it. The narrator, Anna Maria Käll, is doing a good job so she's not to blame, and Munro is a really good writer. Somehow it just wasn't enough this time.

ampersunder's review against another edition

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4.0

‰ЫПRose gets lonely in new places; she wishes she had invitations. She goes out and walks the streets and looks in the lighted windows at all the Saturday-night parties, the Sunday-night family suppers. It‰ЫЄs no good telling herself she wouldn‰ЫЄt be long inside there, chattering and getting drunk, or spooning up the gravy, before she‰ЫЄd wish she was walking the streets. She thinks she could take on any hospitality. She could go to parties in rooms hung with posters, lit by lamps with Coca-Cola shades, everything crumbly and askew; or else in warm professional rooms with lots of books, and brass rubbings, and maybe a skull or two; even in the recreation rooms she can just see the tops of, through the basement windows: rows of beer stems, hunting horns, drinking horns, guns. She could go and sit on lurex-threaded sofas under hangings of black velvet displaying mountains, galleons, polar bears, executed in brushed wool. She would like very much to be dishing up a costly cabinet de diplomate out of a cut-glass bowl in a rich dining room with a big gleaming belly of a sideboard behind her, and a dim picture of horses feeding, cows feeding, sheep feeding, on badly painted purple grass. Or she could do as well with batter pudding in the eating nook of a kitchen in a little stucco house by the bus stop, plaster pears and peaches decorating the wall, ivy curling out of little brass pots. Rose is an actress; she can fit in anywhere.‰Ыќ

inea's review against another edition

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2.0

2 1/3

iriswindmeijer's review against another edition

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3.0

The narrative confused me a bit but I did enjoy the plot about the Beggar Maid.

ryancahill's review against another edition

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I am a full-fledged stan for Alice Munro, and I am slowly working my way through her entire collected works; this is one of the first collections I’ve read of her earlier works, and while I think her mid-to-late career collections are her finest (I am a big defender of Too Much Happiness), I have yet to read a single Munro story that has left me entirely dry. One in this collection — “Providence” — came close, tracking the aimlessness of protagonist Rose’s mid-adulthood, and feeling rather aimless itself, but otherwise I found here all of the same qualities I love about her writing: the natural progressions from memory to memory, the mid-story shifts into new and startling territory, the perfect closing lines that often give me chills (“Who Do You Think You Are?” and “Simon’s Luck” did it for me in this collection). This collection, much like some of the stories in Runaway, has the added benefit of centering around one protagonist, but these nonetheless feel like contained units, even when some of the pay-off is a result of compounded depth. I am incredibly grateful that Munro, throughout her career, wed herself exclusively to the short story form. It has been said plenty of times, but she is a master.

sandraisbooked's review against another edition

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4.0

Munro's writing style is unflinching and her characters are real, real real. I was very surprised by this collection of tied stories. I will definitely be reading her other books after this one. Self-reflection (which the main character goes through) has never been more attractive before!

claudia2945's review against another edition

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5.0

Great stories.