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A review by steller0707
The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose by Alice Munro
5.0
Alice Munro's award-winning book is a set of very loosely, but Chronological stories about Rose, who grows up poor in a small rural Western Ontario town. The stories, which can be read stand-alone but which are satisfying to read in order, are periods in Rose's life -- from her home life with her step-mother Flo and her father, her early school and high school days through marriage, motherhood, divorce, and making a livelihood. Those are the nuts and bolts. In the stories are the hopes, dreams and disappointments of becoming a woman.
I knew I would love this book because Alice Munro is one of my favorite authors. Her settings are of her home in rural Ontario as well as big city life in Toronto. It's a geographic area I know well, from my many wanderings there from my WNY home. These settings are familiar and comfortable. Although Munro is, perhaps, a generation older than I am the customs and mores of coming of age - shopping at Woolworth's, painting fingernail polish so as to leave a half moon at the base, fashions, school - a long forgotten, more innocent time, in some ways, and yet all too familiar. Then there the feelings and emotions that always vividly define Munro's women characters - making her way in work, marriage, motherhood; the complex emotions, the thoughts - all expressed so beautifully. Sometimes it's just a phrase, sometimes a mood. They strike a chord. Are they nostalgic? Yes, in many ways, certainly. But also, I think, universal.
I knew I would love this book because Alice Munro is one of my favorite authors. Her settings are of her home in rural Ontario as well as big city life in Toronto. It's a geographic area I know well, from my many wanderings there from my WNY home. These settings are familiar and comfortable. Although Munro is, perhaps, a generation older than I am the customs and mores of coming of age - shopping at Woolworth's, painting fingernail polish so as to leave a half moon at the base, fashions, school - a long forgotten, more innocent time, in some ways, and yet all too familiar. Then there the feelings and emotions that always vividly define Munro's women characters - making her way in work, marriage, motherhood; the complex emotions, the thoughts - all expressed so beautifully. Sometimes it's just a phrase, sometimes a mood. They strike a chord. Are they nostalgic? Yes, in many ways, certainly. But also, I think, universal.