Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

intensity of Del’s awareness of people around her, of the fine lines of social distinction, the little self-deceptions, the ironical distance between one’s own vision of oneself and that seen by others.” E.D. Ward-Harris, in the Victoria
Daily Colonist
, held that Munro’s “work is consistent, quietly brilliant.… I think it is fair to say that outside of Quebec, anyway, Alice Munro is the most skilled writer of fiction in Canada today.” Christopher Dafoe, who met Munro after the publicity surrounding
Dance
, first wrote a personality column announcing the book’s publication in the
Vancouver Sun
and then followed it up with a review. There he asserts that Munro’s “literary talents have power to spare for the long haul” and concludes that
Lives
“is a work of art,” a “deeply moving and splendidly fashioned novel.”
    Not surprisingly, one of the most thorough and compelling newspaper reviews was by John Metcalf in the
Montreal Star. Lives
, he wrote,
    is a disturbing book for a man to read; for most women perhaps even more uncomfortable, as they will recognise its horrible truth on page after page. It is, on one level, the doctrines of Women’s Lib made, gloriously, flesh. Precisely because it is a novel and not a tract, it is full of delicate insights into the lives of girls and women – mothers, women of defeated ambition, schoolgirls – and, because it is real on every page, full of humour and splendid grossness.
    Though “a sensitive girl,” Del “is no drooping Pre-Raphaelite flower”; she “menstruates, and masturbates; she reads library books to find descriptions of people ‘doing it’; and she encourages an exhibitionist in a scene which [exceeds in] humour and grotesquery.” Taking note of such detail, Metcalf is at pains to say that there is nothing salacious here, that he does not wish to distort “the life and the truth of the book.… Lives of Girls and Women is also a loving and accurate portrait of a people and of a time and place. Growth, sexual or otherwise, does not take place in a vacuum. Del learns from and is formed by her mother and father, aunts, uncles, friends and lovers, by Jubilee itself.” He then quotes the passage from the epilogue, one frequently cited since, where Del says that “no list could hold what I wanted”; seeing her words here as characteristic of Munro’s writing, Metcalf asserts “you can touch and smell every word on every page.” 43
    Some reviewers found fault, though. In Calgary Kevin Peterson, for instance, wanted Munro’s strong descriptions to be shorter and called for “a tighter rein and better editing.” More than a few pointed out that
Lives
, whatever its publisher asserted, is not really a novel. But Canadian newspaper reviews were generally very positive. As newspaper attention gave way to magazines and journals, the reviews became longer and more considered. Writing in a Vancouver monthly entitled
Monday Morning
, Irene Howard notices the subtlety with which Munro characterized Del’s parents, her mother (in much the same way noticed by Dobbs) but also the father. He “remains in the background, generous, undemanding, accepting; another life to be explored, though not in this novel.” That observation later proved to be true. Howard praises Munro “for the honesty she brings to her writing and for the respect and affection in which she holds her characters, men and women.” Clara Thomas in the
Journal of Canadian Fiction
paid especial attention to the epilogue, seeing it as Munro’s “statement of purpose” and asserting that through it she “has certainly succeeded in bringing and holding together the place, the time and the people.”
    Easily the best single notice
Lives of Girls and Women
received was James Polk’s lead review in
Canadian Literature
. Taking up the book with a clear knowledge of
Dance of the Happy Shades
, Polk consideredhow
Lives
extends and amplifies the earlier work. Munro, he says, “hasn’t forgotten a thing about lower-middle class life in the drab and frugal Forties.” Unusually, given most writing from Ontario small towns, in her “work we see Ontario social myths from the bottom up; the poverty line runs smack through her part of town and her characters seem curiously estranged from their environment: the men struggle in silence to earn a living, the women – Munro’s particular concern – are shown to be troubled by isolation and unfulfilled dreams.” Polk also focuses