Summer book club announcement
Let's read Alice Munro's 'Who Do You Think You Are' together
A few newsletters ago, I suggested the idea of a very casual, low-stakes summer book club/read-along, in the style of other literary Substacks that I enjoy. I am excited to annoint Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are as the official selection, with posts beginning on August 8. You can find more information about the book, schedule, and plans below.
Who Do You Think You Are is generally considered a short story cycle, but since it accounts chronologically for the coming-of-age of its protagonist, Rose, others have read it as more of a novel. Thus not unlike Munro’s classic Lives of Girls and Women, this book is concerned with entry into adulthood and the emergence of the woman artist figure. Munro also continues to investigate class, gender, small towns, death, and sexuality, as well as marriage, aging, and rural versus urban divides.
I am interested in the novel for my first dissertation chapter, in which I am writing about witnessing sexual violence in LoGW and feminist performance art—more specifically, I am investigating questions of interpersonal ethics and the ambiguity/uncertainty of reading, knowing, and being acted upon by others. I’m also generally delighted to be spending time with more of Munro’s work, especially given the sad news of her passing earlier this year. So while my dissertation is the primary reason for my reading here, I will be framing the posts to approach the text in much broader strokes. It will also be my first time reading any of these stories, so we will get to encounter them together (although I am also fully prepared to not have much of an audience for this—it’s still fun to write about books and writers I love!).
You might be interested in joining this read-along of Who Do You Think You Are if any of the above themes are compelling to you, if you want to know more about Canada’s only Nobel Prize winning author, are a coming-of-age fan, love gorgeous prose, or want some more (low-stakes) practice with close-reading or literary analysis. I should also add that if you are someone who has recently enjoyed Miranda July’s All Fours, which I wrote about in May, July has recently said that no writer has influenced her approach to the short story form more than Munro!
What my emails will include:
A short summary of what we have just read
A close-reading/passage analysis or two, drawing attention to Munro’s masterful use of language and details that we might find insightful
A few short, miscellaneous observations that may include connections to other books, artworks, or theory, as well as favourite moments, and personal reactions
A few questions to mull over together in the comments or across future weeks
Schedule (bi-weekly):
August 8: “Royal Beatings,” “Privilege,” “Half a Grapefruit,” “Wild Swans”
August 22: “The Beggar Maid,” “Mischief,” “Providence”
September 5: “Simon’s Luck,” “Spelling,” “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Where to buy:
If you are in the United States, you can order from your local indie bookshop via Bookshop.org. *Note that the US title is The Beggar Maid.*
If you are buying in Canada, please try your local bookshop first and avoid Indigo (explanation here) and Amazon. If you need suggestions of where to look in your area, please feel free to ask me—or try your library as well. If you find yourself in a book desert, it looks like McNally Robinson ships nationwide.
I’ve been enjoying ordering used books through Better World Books, which ships from the US but is generally free to Canada. They also donate free books to underfunded schools for every order.