Description
Book SynopsisThe 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
Trade ReviewI 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 *
