Central to all the events in each of the stories of The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose [also published as Who Do You Think You Are?], Rose is the book's protagonist and principal character. Beginning her life in the poor western section of the small town of Hanratty, Rose, like Del in Lives of Girls and Women (1971), considers herself an outsider. But whereas Del's reaction to this feeling of isolation is to search for connections with other people, Rose endeavors to cut herself off from the culture and geographic place where she is so deeply rooted. A key strategy by which she attempts to relieve the pain of her "indigestible lump" of memories of "sad poverty" is to reshape the past through narrative.

Rose reconfigures the "various scandals and bits of squalor from her childhood" into hyperbolic stories, which, in turn, can be "performed" with great...