The Beggar Maid

I loved this book because it’s the best illustration of the stepmother-stepdaughter relationship that I’ve ever read. Flo and Rose’s conflicts over work, sex, and a woman’s place in the world made me remember exactly what it was like to be a teenager struggling to relate to older women in my life.

Like many of Alice Munro’s celebrated short stories, it’s about a young woman growing up in rural Ontario who strains against the prejudices of her small town, especially about girls’ education and ambition. “Who do you think you are?” is the question that comes up again and again… show more.

The book is like a series of snapshots, taken over forty years, as times and the protagonists change (or don’t change). Their relationship readjusts itself but their bond – though sometimes tenuous – never becomes detached. Each story is complete in itself but they build into a collage that reads better as a whole than it did in its parts.

Flo is a practical, unimaginative woman, left to bring up Rose, her stepdaughter. Rose is an awkward child, unpromising at first, but through the course of the stories manages to escape and build her own life.

Munro’s language is sublime,… show more.