''Who Do You Think You Are?'' is a book of

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...

, recipient of the 2013

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

, published by

Macmillan of Canada Macmillan of Canada was a Canadian publishing house. The company was founded in 1905 as the Canadian arm of the English publisher Macmillan. At that time it was known as the "Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd." In the course of its existence the n ...

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 ...

. It won the 1978 Governor General's Award for English Fiction, her second win of that prize. Outside of Canada, the book was published as ''The Beggar Maid''. Under that title, it was also nominated for the

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – In ...

. The collection of short stories revolves around protagonist Rose. The collection has been labelled by some critics as a novel, as the same characters and similar themes recur throughout the book, but there is no formal cohesiveness in plot. Each story explores an idea, and is not bound by a particular time, place, setting, or narrative voice.

Stories

* "Royal Beatings" * "Privilege" * "Half a Grapefruit" * "Wild Swans" * "The Beggar Maid" * "Mischief" * "Providence" * "Simon's Luck" * "Spelling" * "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Summary

As suggested by the title, the theme of identity is central to the collection. The short stories can be described as a

bildungsroman In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...

. Rose grows up in a small town, abused by her father, and living in an impoverished home. In "Half a Grapefruit", she begins attending a school on the more affluent part of town. In class, when asked what she ate for breakfast, she lies and says "half a grapefruit" rather than revealing her mundane, considerably less glamorous meal. The lie haunts her, and she is embarrassed by her upbringing. Rose ends up winning a scholarship to attend university. On a train ride to Toronto, she is molested by a clergyman; she chooses to ignore this incident, but it has irreparable damage on her future relationships with men. At university she meets her husband who has a medieval perspective of women—he is drawn to her because he sees her as a damsel in distress. Her marriage eventually ends, and she has to juggle being a mother, meeting other men, and her acting career. One of her significant relationships is with Simon, a charming man she meets at a friend's house. The two spend the weekend together, and she grows attached to him (she describes it as developing an understanding for Simon's many personas). He disappears unexpectedly afterwards. She later discovers that Simon has died. The final few short stories have her returning home; this gives her a chance to close the chapter of her life involving her complicated relationship with her stepmother Flo.

External links

''Who Do You Think You Are?'' at the Literary Encyclopedia
1978 short story collections Short story collections by Alice Munro Governor General's Award-winning fiction books Macmillan Publishers books {{1990s-story-collection-stub