Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

on the epilogue, but he is more critical of its effect than most reviews. “By resisting” Garnet French, “Del loses the chance to become another forlorn Jubilee housewife, but salvages her soul, and in the novel’s epilogue the dawn of her ambition to be a writer suggests another, better way she can ‘have’ her hometown without being trapped in it forever.” But the “epilogue made me slightly uncomfortable, as if it were an advertisement for the writer’s abilities rather than an afterword organically connected to the novel itself.… Del repeatedly wonders at the bizarre twists in people’s lives, at the destinies that shape our ends. But somehow it’s not good enough; the book, good as it is, never quite jells into the major piece of serious fiction I suspect the author intended it to be.” Polk seeks the reasons for this, finding them in “the novel’s loosely-woven, anecdotal structure” where “the chapters, basically unpruned short stories, are casually linked together by Del’s consciousness.” For Polk, while Munro’s stories and this novel “are funny, well-written, and evocative, it seems the novel misses out on that black, brutal cutting edge that gives the stories their idiosyncratic power.” But even if
Lives of Girls and Women
“falls short of its own ambitions, it is a remarkable book.… Reading Alice Munro’s work is one of the joys of literacy,” he concludes. 44
    Lives of Girls and Women
was passed over for the 1971 Governor General’s Award, which went again that year to Mordecai Richler, but it garnered new attentions and honours for Munro. It was named an Alternate Selection by the Literary Guild of America, a leading book club, and was the first Canadian work of fiction ever selected by the guild. It received the first Canadian Booksellers Association/International Book Year Award, intended by the booksellers “to focus attention on aCanadian book which they feel has not generated the popular interest it merits.” Munro travelled to Ottawa to collect the award in May 1972. Later that year she was named the Outstanding British Columbia Fiction Writer by the province’s library association.
    Meanwhile, Kiil pursued various publishing opportunities on Munro’s and McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s behalf. He arranged an American edition of
Lives
from McGraw-Hill scheduled for September 1972. Thus in the United States Munro did in fact have her first book publication as a novelist, since McGraw-Hill did not bring
Dance
out until fall 1973. He pursued publication for
Lives
in the United Kingdom and, in the United States, tried to interest the Book-of-the-Month Club, sought to place an excerpt from
Lives
in
Ms. Magazine
, and to get the book a film option; he worked also to arrange paperback versions of both books. He also kept pursuing U.S. magazine sales, with some success, selling “Red Dress – 1946” and “An Ounce of Cure” to
McCall’s
. Each appeared there in 1973. By November 1972 Kiil was also asking Munro about her next book. 45

    Less a matter of detail than one of trajectory, Munro’s status as writer of note grew continually as the 1960s passed into the 1970s. When the decade began, “The Peace of Utrecht,” which Munro saw as her first “real” story, was about to appear in the
Tamarack Review
. Its partner “real” story, “Dance of the Happy Shades,” was one of a different sort, not personal material. That story was leading her, a bit haltingly to be sure, into the pages of the
Montrealer
. By 1960 Munro had published fewer than a dozen stories in magazines and Weaver had broadcast half that many. By 1972, she had two books to her credit, a Governor General’s Award, among other awards, and her work was being published and noticed in the United States for the first time. Her career had gained momentum and was growing. Increasing attention was certainly being paid. That this had come about, mostly, through the qualities found in the writing itself is remarkable. Munro had been helped along by many people, foremost among them Robert Weaver – yet as the 1960s passed, Gerald Taaffe, John Robert Colombo, EarleToppings, Audrey Coffin, Toivo Kiil, and John Metcalf emerged also to play their respective roles in Munro’s career. To a person, they saw in Munro’s writing just what John Robert Colombo saw – “that here is writing of quality and character” – and each worked toward her success. Munro herself, dealing with all this, writing hard