The Girl from the Sticks: How Do You Want to Be Inspired by Your Novels? A Conversation with Munro on the “Dear Life of the Girls”
The girl is from the sticks. The ambitions of a bright girl eager to leave were the hallmark of many of her stories, set in small towns on or around Lake Huron. There was the narrator of “Boys and Girls,” who tells herself bedtime stories about a world “that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice, as mine never did.” There was Rose, from “The Beggar Maid,” who wins a college scholarship and leaves her working-class family behind. And there was Del Jordan, from “Lives of Girls and Women” — Munro’s second book, and the closest thing she ever wrote to a novel — who casts a jaundiced eye on her town’s provincial customs as she takes the first fateful steps toward becoming a writer.
Munro was born in 1931, outside of Wingham Ontario. She moved to British Columbia after she finished college and opened a bookstore in the area with her husband. Dance of the Happy Shades won Canada’s prestigious Governor’s General’s Award. That began a career that spanned more than a dozen stories and the novel Lives of Girls and Women.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the year after Dear Life was published, but she was “too frail” to attend the ceremonies. So instead of the usual lecture, she opted for an interview where she was asked “Do you want young women to be inspired by your books and feel inspired to write?” She said that she did not care about what they felt as long as they enjoyed reading the book.
“I don’t want people to find inspiration, but rather great enjoyment.” I want my books to be enjoyed by people because I want them to think of them in ways that are related to their own lives.