Customer Reviews

The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yes, this may not mean much coming from a twelve year old, but Ms Munro, I thought your book was absolutely brilliant. The only thing that worried me was that air of sour mystery, the anticipation of disappointed expectations, a slight shivering of dread as if no matter how well we obey our parents, listen to our teachers, toe whatever invisible line has been drawn for us in the sand, we will in all likelihood end up alone, eating chili out of cans and opening up some tuna for the cats. But if we can have all that, our health, and a light to read your stories by, I guess it won't be all that bad.:)

I've read this book countless times, and will continue to read it again and again. Two stories in the collection, "Simon's Luck," and "The Beggar Maid," are two of my favorite stories ever written. I read these stories, and others by Alice Munro, whenever I feel heartbroken, at a loss, and full of grief...and they never fail to soothe me, to allow me to see the world in new ways.

Alice Munro is one of our greatest living writers. In "The Beggar Maid: stories of Flo and Rose" her writing demonstrates why. Skillfully crafting characters which are hauntingly real, Munro introduces her readers to the small town of West Hanratty, Ontario. It is an intimate portrait of a place and its people, and of the life of a woman, Rose, and her step-mother, Flo. At times comic, and others painfully dramatic, these stories reveal the deep experiences of what it means to find an identity, to love, and to understand oneself. An absolutely brilliant collection of short stories

Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid" is probably the best collection of short stories I've evr read, though their interconnected nature makes it seem like you're reading a novel. In either case, it shows the trademark of all good literature: it touches you, deeply.

Alice Munro may very well be the best short story writer alive today. Comparisons to Chekhov are not far-fetched. The title story, "Royal Beatings," and several others are masterpieces of the form. Munro's writing shows a wisdom and a psychological depth possessed only by the most accomplished artists and students of human nature. Not to mention her prose: spell-binding (I would read the Yellow Pages front to back if Ms. Munro penned them).

I don't even LIKE short stories. I always turn the last page over, and go, `Huh? Where's the rest of it?' But I make an exception for some authors, and Alice Munro is one of them. The Beggar Maid is a collection of stories that verges on some vague new definition of The Novel. It's full of unexpected time leaps in time and even more unexpected transformations of the constant characters. It's all a bit mysterious, confusing, suggestive - and altogether exhilarating. Munro weaves, picks apart, reweaves, then interweaves these stories about two women over a span of 40 years. They are prudish and suspicious Flo, and Rose, her stepdaughter, an awkward pathetic creature who somehow pulls herself out of her stultifying home town and embarks on her own life out in the big bad world.

I had read a review in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY extolling Alice Munro to the skies, so I decided to give her a try by reading this novel.

Without a doubt, the praise is well deserved. If one just looks at a summary of the story by itself, it's another typical women's novel about relationships. What makes it so much more is the fineness and fitness of Munro's perceptions about the way real people think, feel, and express themselves. On the second page, Rose's biological mother says that she feels as if there were "a boiled egg in my chest, with the shell left on." She then proceeds to die of a blood clot on her lung. An image like that sticks in one's craw for many pages.

Later, Rose takes a train trip through heavy snow to Banff: "The train crept along slowly, fearful of avalanches. Rose ... liked the idea of their being shut up in this dark cubicle, under the rough train blankets, borne through such implacable landscape. She always felt that the progress of trains, however perilous, was safe and proper. She felt that planes, on the other hand, might at any moment be appalled by what they were doing, and sink through the air without a whisper of protest."

As we see Rose grow up, get married, get divorced, try as a single mother to hook up with skittish males, and make her way through a middling, muddling life path, we experience a rising crescendo of minor epiphanies. Munro's language always gives dignity to moments of embarrassment, frustration, and minor-key elation.

After having second thoughts about her marriage to Patrick, she falls in love with him again as she sees the vulnerable nape of his neck as he, unknowing, studies in a library carrel. In the end, it turns out to be a bad move as Patrick gives up everything he held dear to become a carbon copy of his obnoxious suburbanite father. What saves the moment is that I can feel each such objective correlative deeply because I've made major decisions on equally shaky grounds.

Munro knows the language of the heart in all its minuteness and treats every step and misstep with the same respect and even love. She is a superb writer, and I eagerly look forward to reading her other works.

Alice Munro has a special place in the contemporary literature. She is the best short story writer alive - period. Nobody does what she does. She can create a whole life in a few pages, using not many words and beautifully dealing with descriptions, plot and character development. Many writers do all these points - some of them are really good -, but there is something in her Chekhovian realism that nobody can do as good.

"The Beggar Maid" is no different. She builds up her characters story after story. This a collection of short stories, but can be read as a novel, as well. The narratives deal with Flo and Rose, a stepmother and a girl throughout many years in their lives. Therefore, we can follow their complicated relationship of love and hate.

Alice Munro is precise in the choice of words to build up an image in her reader's mind. Nevertheless, she doesn't need to spend pages of description to assure the result she wants. The description is necessary to set the story. In this sense, her prose is filled with metaphors and depth.

Alice Munro's body of work is part of a greater one, the one that include masters such as Chekhov himself, Raymond Carver, John Cheever and Andre Dubus, to name a few. They are writers able to create a whole word with a few sentences. The feeling after reading one of their stories lasts longer than the time it took to complete the task. That is what we can call profound.

While it is understandable that stories about Flo and Rose should be anthologized together, so much of Munro's work is already anthologized that if you have any of her books,you may already have most of these stories.
That said, the stories work better together than apart, giving a broad perspective on the lives of the two women and making the reader wonder whether Munro has a different or additional set of eyes to pick up all the detail she does.

Alice Munro is one of my favorite writers, but this book is my favorite within the body of her work. A novel in stories, it would be called now, but when it was published I think that category had yet to be invented, even if novels in stories already existed. Linked stories, then, by character and theme in a mostly chronological exploration of a small cast of characters. The prose is luminous yet ostensibly plain at the same time. I don't know how Munro does it, but she makes the domestic world and lives of ordinary people feel large and wondrous.

In this masterful work, Alice Munro pulls readers into the travails of two characters, Flo and Rose, in small town Canada. Munro artfully musses the line of short story and novel, delighting the reader with a stacatto of whip-smart observations which leave you gasping, weeping or tingling with praise.