Progress Of Love
Registered by gypsysmom of Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada on 6/7/2008
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Note different cover than the one shown.
I bought this book at a second hand bookstore in Charlottetown PEI. They were moving soon and had reduced prices on a lot of titles. I got this book and two others for $1.
I bought this book at a second hand bookstore in Charlottetown PEI. They were moving soon and had reduced prices on a lot of titles. I got this book and two others for $1.
Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. I've read quite a few of her short stories but thought that this occasion was a good excuse to read some more. However, this book was the only one I had on my shelves and, as it happened, it was also available as a Book Club Kit from the Winnipeg Public Library. So I talked my work book club into reading it for January 2014.
This book won the GG for English fiction in 1986 but, to be honest, there are other books of her short stories that I have enjoyed more. The other finalists for the GG were Lois Braun for A Stone Watermelon, John Metcalf for Adult Entertainment and Aritha van Herk for No Fixed Address. I haven't read any of those books so I can't really compare them but I suspect The Progress of Love was the best of a weak bunch. After all, even a sub-par Munro is still a work of literature.
The title story is probably the best in the book. It is told from the point of view of a young girl about her parents, especially her mother. It's been my observation before that Munro really knows how to depict a child's mind. She must have an incredible memory because I think she uses a lot of her own childhood in those types of stories.
I was most disappointed in Eskimo which is about a woman on a plane trip to Tahiti who is sitting close to a couple. The female is much younger than the male but since she tells him at one point that he is not her father it is obvious that theirs is a sexual relationship. And although the narrator has her doubts about the relationship in the end she does nothing. I felt like there was no point in telling this story if there wasn't going to be some outcome.
We'll be meeting to discuss this soon. I predict most people won't have liked the book and I'm disappointed that the Munro we picked to read wasn't a better one.
This book won the GG for English fiction in 1986 but, to be honest, there are other books of her short stories that I have enjoyed more. The other finalists for the GG were Lois Braun for A Stone Watermelon, John Metcalf for Adult Entertainment and Aritha van Herk for No Fixed Address. I haven't read any of those books so I can't really compare them but I suspect The Progress of Love was the best of a weak bunch. After all, even a sub-par Munro is still a work of literature.
The title story is probably the best in the book. It is told from the point of view of a young girl about her parents, especially her mother. It's been my observation before that Munro really knows how to depict a child's mind. She must have an incredible memory because I think she uses a lot of her own childhood in those types of stories.
I was most disappointed in Eskimo which is about a woman on a plane trip to Tahiti who is sitting close to a couple. The female is much younger than the male but since she tells him at one point that he is not her father it is obvious that theirs is a sexual relationship. And although the narrator has her doubts about the relationship in the end she does nothing. I felt like there was no point in telling this story if there wasn't going to be some outcome.
We'll be meeting to discuss this soon. I predict most people won't have liked the book and I'm disappointed that the Munro we picked to read wasn't a better one.
Journal Entry 3 by gypsysmom at Fry Creek Trailhead in Johnson's Landing, British Columbia Canada on Monday, September 1, 2014
Released 9 yrs ago (8/22/2014 UTC) at Fry Creek Trailhead in Johnson's Landing, British Columbia Canada
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
We didn't walk this trail because it was too long. Maybe some other time we'll go earlier in the day. I thought this little book of short stories might be something someone would like to take on the trail with them or take home with them after finishing the trail. This release was for the 2014 52 Towns in 52 Weeks release challenge.
