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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"It was clear to me at once that I was not thinking as the girl thought... I wanted men to love me *and* I wanted to think of the universe when I looked at the moon."
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This was such a beautifully written novel about girlhood and the transition into womanhood. it was clear that Alice Munro is a short story author first, the chapters were more a series of short stories than a traditional novel flow. I liked it.
It was interesting to have Del's mother be a projection of who Del may become, should she choose to get married and stay in Jubilee. Her own sexual flowering alongside her mother's seeming asexuality was well written. Del was so headstrong and "other" in a town that rejected otherness. Her intellectual connection with Jerry and their fumbling sexual exploration was so necessary to her understanding of herself as a powerful and intelligent woman.
Munro's introduction of the character Garnet and dipping Del back into religious zeal showed just how much she had evolved from her girlhood forays into the religious experience. I loved the use of Naomi as a foil, especially the early years when she was beginning to conform to the expectations put on her by the machine of capitalist consumerism. Her marriage because of a pregnancy alongside Del's rejection of marriage to pursue her dreams was both incredibly sad for her and exactly right for Del.
I did get bogged down in the 1st quarter of the book and decided to push through, I'm glad I did. I can see why this won the Nobel Prize.
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This was such a beautifully written novel about girlhood and the transition into womanhood. it was clear that Alice Munro is a short story author first, the chapters were more a series of short stories than a traditional novel flow. I liked it.
It was interesting to have Del's mother be a projection of who Del may become, should she choose to get married and stay in Jubilee. Her own sexual flowering alongside her mother's seeming asexuality was well written. Del was so headstrong and "other" in a town that rejected otherness. Her intellectual connection with Jerry and their fumbling sexual exploration was so necessary to her understanding of herself as a powerful and intelligent woman.
Munro's introduction of the character Garnet and dipping Del back into religious zeal showed just how much she had evolved from her girlhood forays into the religious experience. I loved the use of Naomi as a foil, especially the early years when she was beginning to conform to the expectations put on her by the machine of capitalist consumerism. Her marriage because of a pregnancy alongside Del's rejection of marriage to pursue her dreams was both incredibly sad for her and exactly right for Del.
I did get bogged down in the 1st quarter of the book and decided to push through, I'm glad I did. I can see why this won the Nobel Prize.
I'd normally be hesitant to rate a book so highly that lacks a compelling plot that runs throughout the novel and that sometimes gets heavy-handed with her particular feminist perspective, but I found the characters so believable and knowable that I forgot to bear those other things in mind.
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
"But I hope you will-use your brains. Use your brains. Don't be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being-distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does."
I am not a fan of Alice Munro, however, my book club chose this novel to read, so I went into it with an open mind. By the mid-point of the book I realized that I still did not like the writings of Alice Munro. This story is centred on a young girl in northern Ontario and moves through her life, telling her story through her eyes. I found that the story was a rambling mess without any central theme. I felt the writer pulled out characters that had all the worst lives, the worst attributes and the worst personalities ever written, then she threw it all together into a pot and stirred. I found that I didn't care what happened to anyone in the book, and often had to backtrack to figure out what the heck was going on - as the rambling seemed to take a reader to one point then suddenly you find yourself at another point without really knowing how you travelled there. I do not recommend this book or any of her stories.