Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lives of Girls and Women | 1971 | Alice Munro | Buy |
Lives of Girls and Women, published in 1971, is Alice Munro’s only novel. It follows Del Jordan as she grows up in the fictional town of Jubilee, Ontario, and the book reads as a series of connected episodes rather than a single continuous plot. Each chapter works almost like a standalone story, which makes sense given that Munro spent the rest of her career in the short form.
The novel covers Del’s childhood observations, her religious questioning, her first sexual experiences, and her growing desire to become a writer. It is an early and personal work, and many of its themes, especially the tension between small-town life and artistic ambition, would appear throughout Munro’s later stories.