Lives of Mothers & Daughters

146 Pages·2016·3.57 MB·English

by  Munro Sheila

Bixcs oe Watecstars
ae Daughters
“The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the
one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this
whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark
her off, to describe, to illuminate, to celebrate, to get rid of her; and
it did not work, for she looms too close, just as she always did.”
from ALICE MUNRO’s story “The Ottawa Valley”

“I know I am on dangerous ground here. | tell myself I am wrong
to see fiction in this way, that fiction, even autobiographical fiction,
is not the same as autobiography, but I can’t change it, I can’t
unravel the truth of my mother’s fiction from the reality of what
actually happened. So much of what I think I know, and I think I
know more about my mother’s life than almost any daughter
could know, is refracted through the prism of her writing. So
unassailable is the truth of her fiction that sometimes I even feel
as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story. It’s as if her
view of the world must be the way the world really is, because it
feels so convincing, so true, that you trust her every word.”
from SHEILA MUNRO’s Lives of Mothers and Daughters
Can $34.99 / US $27.95

Lives of Mothers & Daughters
G rowing Up with Alice Mu nro
Sheila Munro

(with illustrations throughout)

lice Munro is one of the most famous fiction

writers in the world, a serious candidate for a Nobel
Prize for Literature. One of her best-known stories is
“Miles City, Montana,” where a family driving across the
country almost loses the younger daughter in a swim-
ming pool accident. This is fiction at its most powerful.

In fact that story is based on a real Munro family
incident in 1961 when Sheila Munro was seven and Jenny
Munro a non-swimmer of four. As Sheila writes here:
“When I first read the story I marvelled at my mother’s
ability to capture my character. Yes, that was me; except
for physical appearances I felt I was Cynthia and Jenny
was Meg. And I thought, how could she know I was like
that, ‘too eager to be what we in fact depended on her to
be, and so terribly sensitive to criticism, and how could
she not want to change that? It is hard to accept that she
could recreate me in fiction exactly the way I really was,
without understanding the psychological angle, without
knowing how I felt. She must have known.”

Clearly, there are many layers in this remarkable book.
Part memoir and part biography of Alice Munro, it is
not — very definitely not — a Mommie Dearest attack on
a mother. By contrast this is a respectful book by a
daughter who loves her mother, and who recognizes —
and celebrates — her genius as a writer.

But if it is hard to be the child of a famous parent,
consider how much harder it must be to be the child of
a famous writer, in this case recognizing yourself in
your mother’s stories. Even harder when that mother’s
field is family relationships, in which she shows a genius
for knowing how family dynamics affect everyone’s
deepest feelings, even those of teenage daughters. To
make matters worse, your own family life (“I caught
my mother weeping, obviously in the middle of a fight
with my father”) disintegrates, as your mother and
father split up. And then, as a final complication, you
try to make your own way as a writer. (A friend heard

continued on back flap
continued from front flap
Sheila describing a writing project and turned to say,
“Oh Alice, you should be the one writing this. Imagine
what YOU could do with it.”)

This is much richer than a simple biography of
Alice Munro. But the wide array of family snapshots
adds greatly to our knowledge of her world, and for
those who know and love Alice Munro’s work there are
many delights in store, as we learn about the writer’s
ancestors (including Scotland’s James Hogg), her parents,
and her childhood in harsh circumstances in Wingham,
Ontario, before her marriage took her out west. As we
follow her career, personal and professional, from the
early days in Vancouver — when a newspaper profile was
headed “Housewife Finds Time to Write Short Stories”
— it is fascinating to see her real-life experience reflected
again and again in her books. Every single one of these
books is represented here as Sheila Munro reveals
surprising real-life parallels for many of the best-loved
stories and for the novel, Lives of Girls and Women.

Lives of Mothers and Daughters is a complex book,
simply told but with many layers. Faithful Alice Munro
readers will find it fascinating. Above all it is a brave
and honest book, a triumph that reveals that, yes, there
is another writer in the Munro family.

SHEILA MUNRO was born in
1953, the eldest daughter of Jim
and Alice Munro. Her family life,
education and career in Victoria,
Vancouver, and Toronto is the
subject of this book. She now lives
in Powell River, B.C., with her husband and two sons.
Her mother has been known to babysit to give her time
to write this, her first book.

Jacket photo: Munro family
Author photo: Pat Brown
Jacket design: Terri-Anne Fong

[A doucis cisson Book]

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
The Canadian Publishers
MsS www.meclelland.com
Lives.of Mothers
& Daughters
Lives of Mothers
& Daughters

Growsng Up With Alice Mune

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