Alice Munro, the Canadian writer, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, primarily because she revolutionized the form of the short story. However, she did write one novel, Lives of Girls and Women, which is also a masterpiece. The novel is written as if it were a fictional autobiography, a mature woman looking back on her life and focusing primarily on two subjects: the development of her sexuality and her rejection of religion. We will read and discuss the novel primarily by sharing how we understand the novel’s narrator and whether we emotionally identify with her, based on a theory of reading called “perspective taking.” In an Epilogue the narrator seemingly finds a new purpose in life, so we will also consider whether this new purpose has, if not a religious, then a spiritual component. At various points in our reading, we will also consider what the narrator’s confessions about her life might tell us about her as a mature woman.

Thus, the class will be devoted primarily to discussion, except for two short lectures to give us a vocabulary to talk about the novel: one on “perspective taking” and one on how psychologists of religion and spirituality distinguish between the two.