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Notes and Commentaries

Volume 09, Number 1 (1984)

A Sense of Ending in Lives of Girls and Women

  • L. M. Eldredge
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1984-01-01

Abstract

Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women does not contain a traditional plot. The ending is, in one sense, arbitrary, as any ending that stops short of the ultimate finality (of a romantic or unrealistic ending) must be. We see in this novel the gritty and specific details of reality as the traditionally pat and satisfying ending does not appear. Thus, Munro's fiction, although grounded in the realistic tradition, does not fit easily into categories or realism or of Romance, although both styles are utilized.