Alice Munro

Who Do You Think You Are? . "All ten of the stories in the book follow the career of Rose, whom we first meet as a child growing up in the small town of Hanratty. Rose is a clever, shyly ambitious girl who is fascinated yet appalled by the rude energy of the people around her. After surviving the tensions and embarrassments of home and high school (and a bizarre sexual initiation on a train) she leaves the world of Hanratty and enters university. There, to the surprise of both families, she meets and marries Patrick, heir to a large West Coast fortune. Their married life in Vancouver is not a success, and produces a series of crises, guilty and unsuccessful affairs, and one child. In due course Rose leaves with her child and begins a successful career as an actress and interviewer. When finally she moves back east, we see her making a wary return to her home territory, a small-town girl who can never lose the small-town sense of involvement, of responsibility...."

Stories

Who Do You Think You Are?

alice munro is incredibly brilliant when it comes to digging into the most mundane and ugly aspects of the human psyche and human relationships and had an irreplaceable impact on my writing. her incisiveness escapes the personal and often traverses into the political and i admire her deeply for being able to do that naturally while maintaining a fictional and character-based narrative. rose may have her awful qualities but reading this book i find it impossible not to want to drag her through her troubles and nudge her in the shoulder with a smile.

lauren amitirigala

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature** Born into the back streets of a small Canadian town, Rose battled incessantly with her practical and shrewd stepmother, Flo, who cowed her with tales of her own past and warnings of the dangerous world outside. But Rose was ambitious - she won a scholarship and left for Toronto where she married Patrick. She was his Beggar Maid, 'meek and voluptuous, with her shy white feet', and he was her knight, content to sit and adore her. Alice Munro's wonderful collection of stories reads like a novel following Rose's life as she moves away from her impoverished roots and forges her own path in the world.

Who Do You Think You Are? Stories

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