The view from Castle Rock

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Language
English

Description

A powerful new collection from one of our most beloved, admired, and honored writers. In stories that are more personal than any that she’s written before, Alice Munro pieces her family’s history into gloriously imagined fiction. A young boy is taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock, where his father assures him that on a clear day he can see America, and he catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. In stories that follow, as the dream becomes a reality, two sisters-in-law experience very different kinds of passion on the long voyage to the New World; a baby is lost and magically reappears on a journey from an Illinois homestead to the Canadian border. Other stories take place in more familiar Munro territory, the towns and countryside around Lake Huron, where the past shows through the present like the traces of a glacier on the landscape and strong emotions stir just beneath the surface of ordinary comings and goings. First love flowers under the apple tree, while a stronger emotion presents itself in the barn. A girl hired as summer help, and uneasy about her “place” in the fancy resort world she’s come to, is transformed by her employer’s perceptive parting gift. A father whose early expectations of success at fox farming have been dashed finds strange comfort in a routine night job at an iron foundry. A clever girl escapes to college and marriage. Evocative, gripping, sexy, unexpected—these stories reflect a depth and richness of experience. The View from Castle Rock is a brilliant achievement from one of the finest writers of our time.

More Details

Contributors
Farr, Kimberly Narrator
Munro, Alice Author
ISBN
9781400077922
9780786294961
9780739349304
9781400042821

Table of Contents

From the Book - First Vintage International edition.

Part one : No advantages. No advantages ; The view from Castle Rock ; Illinois ; The wilds of Morris Township ; Working for a living --
Part two : Home. Fathers ; Lying under the apple tree ; Hired girl ; The ticket ; Home ; What do you want to know for? --
Epilogue. Messenger.

From the Large Type

No advantages
The view from Castle Rock
Illinois
The wilds of Morris Township
Working for a living
Fathers
Lying under the apple tree
Hired girl
The ticket
Home
What do you want to know for?

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These books have the appeal factors moving and spare, and they have the genre "short stories"; the subjects "families," "women," and "family relationships"; and characters that are "complex characters" and "authentic characters."
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These books have the appeal factors moving, reflective, and spare, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "canadian fiction"; and characters that are "authentic characters."
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These authors specialize in character-driven short fiction that focuses on the frustrations and difficulties of ordinary people. Their witty, perceptive, and densely layered stories are marked by well-developed and complex characters, persistent ambiguity, acute psychological insight, and powerful emotional depth. -- Derek Keyser
Both Alice Munro and Edith Pearlman write short fiction that perceptively captures the experiences of their characters in deceptively simple prose. Both portray events in the lives of ordinary people that illuminate the human condition. -- Katherine Johnson
These authors write about ordinary people and their ordinary troubles, but their perceptive, precise, and engaging writing style portrays simple moments as much more. -- Shauna Griffin
Canadian Alice Munro and American Elizabeth Spencer are masters of subtle complexity, offering glimpses into vast but recognizable moral and psychological landscapes. Both portray believable characters in precise and evocative prose. -- Katherine Johnson
Working mainly in short stories, writers Alice Munro and Jamel Brinkley create complex characters and moving emotional and moral conflicts that infuse a novelistic texture into the space of a few pages. Munro features Canadian women characters; Brinkley's stories often feature Black men in families and relationships in New York. -- Michael Shumate
Canadian writers Alice Munro and Carrianne Leung create spare and elegant short stories that portray the lives and relationships of an array of characters in modern Canada. Munro's complex protagonists are usually white women, while Leung's own voice stories feature Chinese Canadians trying to assimilate while dealing with racism. -- Michael Shumate
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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Munro is universally accepted as one of the outstanding writers of the short story in English, but her new book is both frustrating and exhilarating. The nerve it took, to pick up and cross the ocean, remarks a character in one of the stories in the first--the frustrating--grouping of stories; that statement could stand as the theme underlying the entire book. Munro has always relied on characters' personal and familial histories as chief material from which her beautifully articulated stories are fashioned, and this traditional type of Munro story populates the second half of this collection. There, Munro traditionalists will find much to feast on. It is the first half of the book that is problematic. She introduces these stories as fiction; topically, they are about her Scottish ancestors coming to Canada and the roots and branches established therein. Writing style--yes, predictably limpid and lovely. And they are as psychologically astute as one would expect from a very smart writer. But they taste like autobiographical essays; her intrusions into the prose not as narrator but as actual author prove distracting and erode the veil of suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, only purists will howl over the issue of authorial intrusion, and the vast number of fiction readers will be completely absorbed. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Ten collections of stories and one novel have made Alice Munro one of the most praised fiction writers of our time. In The View from Castle Rock her full range of gifts is on display: indelible characters, deep insights about human behavior and relationships, vibrant prose, and seductive, suspenseful storytelling. Munro, in a foreword, tells how, a decade ago, she began looking into her family history, going all the way back to 18th-century Scotland. This material eventually became the stories presented here in part 1, "No Advantages." Munro also worked on "a special set of stories," none of which she included in previous collections, because they were "rather more personal than the other stories I had written." They now appear here in part 2, "Home." With both parts, Munro says, she has had a free hand with invention. Munro has used personal material in her fiction before, but at 75, she has given us something much closer to autobiography. Much of the book concerns people who have died, and places and ways of life that no longer exist or have been completely transformed, and though Munro is temperamentally unsentimental the mood is often elegiac. One difficulty that can arise with this kind of hybrid work is that the reader is likely to be distracted by the itch to know whether an event really occurred, or how much has been made up or embellished. In the title story, the reader is explicitly told that almost everything has been invented, and this enthralling multilayered narrative about an early 19th-century Scottish family's voyage to the New World is the high point of the collection. On the other hand, "What Do You Want to Know For?" at the heart of which is an account of a cancer scare Munro experienced, reads like pure memoir and seems not only thin by comparison but insufficiently imagined as a short story. Perhaps none of the stories here is quite up to the mastery of earlier Munro stories such as "The Beggar Maid" or "The Albanian Virgin." But getting this close to the core of the girl who would become the master is a privilege and a pleasure not to be missed. And reliably as ever when the subject is human experience, Munro's stories-whatever the proportions of fiction and fact-always bring us the truth. (Nov.) Sigrid Nunez's most recent novel, The Last of Her Kind, will be published in paperback by Picador in December. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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Library Journal Review

Munro's newest story collection gracefully reconstructs her family history. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Booklist Reviews

Munro is universally accepted as one of the outstanding writers of the short story in English, but her new book is both frustrating and exhilarating. "The nerve it took, to pick up and cross the ocean," remarks a character in one of the stories in the first--the frustrating--grouping of stories; that statement could stand as the theme underlying the entire book. Munro has always relied on characters' personal and familial histories as chief material from which her beautifully articulated stories are fashioned, and this traditional type of Munro story populates the second half of this collection. There, Munro traditionalists will find much to feast on. It is the first half of the book that is problematic. She introduces these stories as fiction; topically, they are about her Scottish ancestors coming to Canada and the roots and branches established therein. Writing style--yes, predictably limpid and lovely. And they are as psychologically astute as one would expect from a very "smart" writer. But they taste like autobiographical essays; her intrusions into the prose not as narrator but as actual author prove distracting and erode the veil of suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, only purists will howl over the issue of authorial intrusion, and the vast number of fiction readers will be completely absorbed. ((Reviewed September 1, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews

Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews
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Library Journal Reviews

Munro's newest story collection gracefully reconstructs her family history. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Library Journal Reviews

With this new collection, Munro (Runaway ) more than lives up to her reputation as a master of short fiction. In 12 exquisitely constructed tales, she draws on family lore and letters to interpret the history of her Laidlaw relatives, a tough bunch from Scotland's Ettrick Valley that eventually emigrated to the New World. The title story, set in 1818, details a transatlantic voyage undertaken by six Laidlaws for whom ocean sailing is a totally new experience. Their struggles in adjusting to shipboard life anticipate challenges ahead in America as their fears and hopes culminate in the arrival of baby Isabel, all her life to be known as one "born at sea." In "No Advantages," a modern-day narrator's visit to Ettrick reveals what the family gained (and perhaps lost) by leaving the legend-haunted valley, while other stories explore how the harsh realities of wilderness pioneering affect several generations. All the narratives exhibit Munro's keen eye for realistic details and her ability to illuminate the depths of seemingly mundane lives and relationships. Highly recommended.—Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA

[Page 64]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

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Reviewed by Sigrid Nunez.

Ten collections of stories and one novel have made Alice Munro one of the most praised fiction writers of our time. In The View from Castle Rock her full range of gifts is on display: indelible characters, deep insights about human behavior and relationships, vibrant prose, and seductive, suspenseful storytelling.

Munro, in a foreword, tells how, a decade ago, she began looking into her family history, going all the way back to 18th-century Scotland. This material eventually became the stories presented here in part 1, "No Advantages." Munro also worked on "a special set of stories," none of which she included in previous collections, because they were "rather more personal than the other stories I had written." They now appear here in part 2, "Home." With both parts, Munro says, she has had a free hand with invention.

Munro has used personal material in her fiction before, but at 75, she has given us something much closer to autobiography. Much of the book concerns people who have died, and places and ways of life that no longer exist or have been completely transformed, and though Munro is temperamentally unsentimental the mood is often elegiac.

One difficulty that can arise with this kind of hybrid work is that the reader is likely to be distracted by the itch to know whether an event really occurred, or how much has been made up or embellished. In the title story, the reader is explicitly told that almost everything has been invented, and this enthralling multilayered narrative about an early 19th-century Scottish family's voyage to the New World is the high point of the collection. On the other hand, "What Do You Want to Know For?" at the heart of which is an account of a cancer scare Munro experienced, reads like pure memoir and seems not only thin by comparison but insufficiently imagined as a short story.

Perhaps none of the stories here is quite up to the mastery of earlier Munro stories such as "The Beggar Maid" or "The Albanian Virgin." But getting this close to the core of the girl who would become the master is a privilege and a pleasure not to be missed. And reliably as ever when the subject is human experience, Munro's stories—whatever the proportions of fiction and fact—always bring us the truth. (Nov.)

Sigrid Nunez's most recent novel, The Last of Her Kind, will be published in paperback by Picador in December.

[Page 42]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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