4 out of 5 stars. I would have given this 3 stars, but am giving it 4 because it is well written.
It was well written, but there is not a traditional "story" here. Instead, the author, who is more well known for her short stories, really has written a collection of about 8 short stories which all chronologically tell about the main character's years growing up in a remote rural village in Canada in the 1940s. It is not really a short story collection since all the stories are chronological and about the life of Del, but each chapter contains it's own story. So this is really something between a short story collection and a novel. If I had known this when I started reading it I might have liked it more. Since I thought it was a novel I thought the first few chapters were really choppy and I was waiting for some type of connected story to develop which didn't seem to be happening.
The chapters/stories start with Del's early life on a fox skin farm and then she moves to the nearby town with her mom and the last few chapters are her high school years. We see Del's school play, her first crush, her visits to different churches in one chapter and her exploration of religion, her teenage sexual curiousity, her hopes and dreams for the future. But the chapters focus less on action/plot and more on Del's observations about the women she encounters. In each chapter there is a female character: from the crazy lady next door, to a beloved high school teacher, to her best friend who takes a very divergent path in life from Del. My favorite of the female characters were the ones who were stronger and less traditional, like her mother who decided to leave the fox farm (even though she remained married to her husband and they saw each other on the weekends), move to the town, and she drove a truck all over the area selling encyclopedias. There was not much for women at that time and that area of Canada beyond traditional roles of marriage and children and we see female characters in those roles as well as some "old maids" who went a different route.
I found the later chapters more interesting. Maybe because by then I was starting to read each chapter as its own story. But the later chapters all had an unexpected shocking event or ending subtly woven into it. The kind where you'd have to stop and go back and re-read thinking "did that just happen? is that what I think?" It was very well written in that way.
It was well written, but there is not a traditional "story" here. Instead, the author, who is more well known for her short stories, really has written a collection of about 8 short stories which all chronologically tell about the main character's years growing up in a remote rural village in Canada in the 1940s. It is not really a short story collection since all the stories are chronological and about the life of Del, but each chapter contains it's own story. So this is really something between a short story collection and a novel. If I had known this when I started reading it I might have liked it more. Since I thought it was a novel I thought the first few chapters were really choppy and I was waiting for some type of connected story to develop which didn't seem to be happening.
The chapters/stories start with Del's early life on a fox skin farm and then she moves to the nearby town with her mom and the last few chapters are her high school years. We see Del's school play, her first crush, her visits to different churches in one chapter and her exploration of religion, her teenage sexual curiousity, her hopes and dreams for the future. But the chapters focus less on action/plot and more on Del's observations about the women she encounters. In each chapter there is a female character: from the crazy lady next door, to a beloved high school teacher, to her best friend who takes a very divergent path in life from Del. My favorite of the female characters were the ones who were stronger and less traditional, like her mother who decided to leave the fox farm (even though she remained married to her husband and they saw each other on the weekends), move to the town, and she drove a truck all over the area selling encyclopedias. There was not much for women at that time and that area of Canada beyond traditional roles of marriage and children and we see female characters in those roles as well as some "old maids" who went a different route.
I found the later chapters more interesting. Maybe because by then I was starting to read each chapter as its own story. But the later chapters all had an unexpected shocking event or ending subtly woven into it. The kind where you'd have to stop and go back and re-read thinking "did that just happen? is that what I think?" It was very well written in that way.
