This is just a beautifully-written book.
I was introduced to Alice Munro in college when I had to read one of her short stories for a class. That has led me to snatch up her books any time I come across one. This book caught my attention when I was at a small local bookstore in Wisconsin this spring.
I actually grabbed it off my shelf recently thinking it was one of the short story collections of hers that I have. I just wanted something short to read on the train that I could finish before leaving for my trip to Florida.
By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late: I was already on the platform and a train was on its way. I had no time to go back for the right book and if I didn’t start reading this, I would be left with nothing to do for the train ride downtown (horror of horrors)!
Fortunately, it’s a quick read. I had to put it down while I was traveling to Florida and reading on my kindle, but it was easy to pick up again.
Munro’s writing makes me question everything I have ever learned about what makes “good writing.” Stephen King is often quoted as saying, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” (I’m not sure this comment originated with him, but it’s most often attributed to him). Most of the time, I agree with King. Adverbs are generally unnecessary and can be deleted without detracting from the story.
Not so with Munro.
King’s writing is all about telling the story as quickly and succinctly as possible and there is a lot of merit in that, but that’s not what Munro is going for.
Munro lingers over her story. It’s as much about the beauty of her prose as it is the story. Each adverb didn’t just describe what happened, it added a layer of emotion that would have been absent without the adverb.
Just because the writing captivated me, doesn’t mean the story wasn’t worthwhile. It’s about Del, an intelligent, ambitious girl growing up in a small town in Canada. The book describes her struggle to find God, her first crush, and sex. The conversations she has with her best friend about sex delighted me because they were so based in reality.
In a world without sex ed or the Internet, children are left to glean what they can from the world around them. Del resorts to books while Naomi repeats everything her mother (a nurse, although apparently not a very well-educated one) tells her. The mistakes they make in their first guesses about sex and their whisperings of first crushes had a ring of truth that, honestly, made me a bit nostalgic for my own pubescent days (there’s something I never thought I’d write)!
The book then covers how easy it is for friends to grow apart. Being set in a small town of that time, many of Del’s classmates don’t even finish high school, much less go on to college. She watches her friends move into the workforce and prepare for marriage while she remains in school, which was especially unusual because she was a girl.
It’s a fantastic book and I would recommend it to anyone. If you haven’t read anything by Munro yet, you can easily get your hands on one of her short stories to get a taste of her writing style. It’s magnificent.
What did you guys read this week? Anything that moved at a different pace from what you were expecting? I want to hear all about it in the comments!