Lives of Girls and Women

　　One of the most vivid portrayals of female adolescence in modern fiction, Lives of Girls and Women revealed Alice Munro to be a writer of exceptional skill and empathy. First published in 1971, Munro's one and only novel traces one girl's journey from childhood to womanhood. Now 34 years after its first publication, Lives of Girls and Women is available on CD from BTC Audiobooks just as the novel is also being released as a Penguin Classic. Narrated by Canadian actor Judy Mahbey, this audio edition, originally broadcast on CBC Radio, conveys the emotional resonance of this classic work by Canada's most celebrated practitioner of the short story. As a girl, Del Jordan lived on her father's fox farm at the end of Flats Road with her rough younger brother and an eccentric bachelor family friend as companions. But as she grew up and started spending more time with the women in town, she explored the dark and bright sides of womanhood: sex, birth and death. Now an adult, and far away from the little Ontario town of Jubilee, Del Jordan wants to be a writer. Recalling the seemingly insignificant events that marked her awkward transition into the adult world, she relives her childish dreams of fame with acute self-awareness, suffers embarrassment at the hands of her encyclopedia-selling mother, endures the humiliation of her body's insistent desires and desperately attempts to fall in love. Alice Munro's prose combined with Judy Mahbey's narration results in a powerful, moving and humorous demonstration of an unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.