Lives of Girls and Women

Description

Moving, ribald and semi-autobiographical, Lives of Girls and Women is the only novel from Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature The only novel from bestselling author Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Catching frogs, grazing knees, singing songs to save England from Hitler - that was childhood for Del Jordan, and now she's impatient for more. More than she can find in the encyclopedias sold by her mother, or in the half-understood innuendos dispensed by best friend Naomi, or in the whispers of boys during Friday night dances. Just like the girls in the movies, she wants to get started on real life. In her only novel, Alice Munro turns her eye to the frustrations, embarrassments, glee and bewilderment of adolescence, and to the brushes with sex, death, violence and birth that shape the lives of girls and women. 'I am the perfect audience for her brand of quiet, seething feminism' Lena Dunham 'Superb' Independent 'In Munro's work, nothing can be predicted. Emotions erupt. Preconceptions crumble. Surprises proliferate' Margaret Atwood 'Exact and unflinching' Guardian 'She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion' Jonathan Franzen

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature** Alice Munro was born in 1931 and is the author of thirteen collections of stories, most recently Dear Life, and a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. She has received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Beggar Maid, and has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage, and in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Port Hope, Ontario, near lake Ontario in Canada.

I still feel that Alice Munro is mine. I am the perfect audience for her brand of quiet, seething feminism -- Lena Dunham Munro is so good that one gropes for superlatives * Daily Telegraph * Superb. Its dense weave of colour and texture offers manifold witty surprises and the poetry of place that is the hallmark of Munro's stories -- Steve Davies * Independent * In Munro's work, nothing can be predicted. Emotions erupt. Preconceptions crumble. Surprises proliferate -- Margaret Atwood Her prose is exact and unflinching, coolly anatomising vengeful grudges, dark crimes and curdled emotions * Guardian * The Nobel laureate's mastery of the miniature is clear in this early portrait of small-town life -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian * She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion -- Jonathan Franzen She knows us better than we know ourselves. She always has * Washington Times * Reading Munro's cut-crystal prose is unadulterated pleasure * Daily Telegraph * A compelling portrait of the artist as a young girl -- Maggie Doherty * The Times Literary Supplement *