My first reading of Alice Munro. A nice discovery and I'm gonna read more from her for sure.

When I asked a colleague which Alice Munro book I should read first, he recommended this one to me. I started reading it two months ago, but it took me such a long time because of the dense style of the beginning of the novel, about the settlers who went to North America. When Munro gets around to the 20th century however, I was intrigued and I quickly finished the rest of the book. I love her style in the modern part of the novel. She writes subtly, vividly, letting you look closely at the main character, but not showing you everything, so you have to make up your own mind about her. For some reason I was reminded of The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. They both describe the consciousness of (young) women in a completely beautiful way - relatable yet distanced and completely enticing. I long to read more by Alice Munro.

It really pains me to give this book just three stars. I've been a long-time fan of Alice Munro and her short story collections and often find myself thinking of her stories long after I've turned the last page. There is always something haunting and memorable about her characters.

So it's with great dismay that I admit I didn't care for “The View from Castle Rock”. I started and stopped; started and stopped - not once, but twice - before finally reading it all the way through. Even then, I can't say I enjoyed it. My eyes would glaze over and I even fell asleep once. Sacrilegious, I know!

For some reason, this book on the history of Munro's family didn't engage me in the way her usual short stories and characters do. Perhaps it was my own mistake to think this telling of her family history would feel like her other stories - stories where I feel almost voyeuristic when immersed in the minutiae of her characters. It wasn't poorly written, just not what I expected.

I feel badly that this was such a personal book for her and that I didn't like it more. I'm still a huge fan and will continue reading whatever she writes for as long as she continues to write.

Just not my cup of tea as an audio book despite the gorgeous Scottish accents that peppered the first story.

Billed as a collection of stories, spanning the centuries, connecting storytellers to writers, The View from Castle Rock is, as one reviewer stated, "a delightful fraud." It's a memoir, fleshed out with fiction but based heavily on Alice Munro's family stories, starting with Will O'Phaup, star of rumor and myth and proceeding with his descendents as a character study of all the family members who came across the ocean. Those Laidlaws and O'Phaups who wrote and were written about. The Ettick Valley from whence her Scots ancestors came is described it with the ease of those who did live there, as though all these things are as familiar to her as the bush at the back of her family's farm. Though she has been there, walking the wet midlands while it rained on and off, she maintains that these are all just stories. The emphasis of her Forward is more on the flow of these tales from an original source which is never obscured with her liberties.

I read slowly at first, dubiously seeing the connections of past leading to stories she may have heard at the fireplace. Themes and hand-me-downs began to quietly appear, family lines branched, yet always returned to Huron County, and to point toward Munro's own life. Once I reached my last possible return date for this library book, I began to rip through it, and found the effect not at all negative. Nearing the last half of the book the stories become even more personal, dealing with people that Munro has observed in her own life, briefly, like her grandparents, or more closely, like her own parents. This does not mean she does not illustrate their lives as she did with Will O'Phaup, or the little-known-of William Laidlaw, in fact she may be more willing to illuminate them since she can better see what would or could have been.

But I had meant, didn't he think of himself, of the boy who had trapped along the Blyth Creek, and who went into the store and asked for Signs Snow Paper, didn't he struggle for his own self? I meant, was his life now something only other people had a use for? (p166)

She takes advantage of knowing these people and conjuring bits of fancy to tie to her memories, the details of her childhood impressions filling in the gaps of old memories; reflective commentary solidifies them.

It must have meant something, though, that at this turn of my life I grabbed up a book. Because it was in books that I would find, for the next few years, my lovers. They were men, not boys. They were self-possessed and sardonic, with a ferocious streak in them, reserves of gloom. Not Edgar Linton, not Ashley Wilkes. Not one of them companionable or kind. (p226)

My favorite thing about The View from Castle Rock was being reminded that this was a collection of people who could be traced from generation to generation, and Munro's reception of this legacy; her family's affection for books, for reading, for writing, for storytelling. It's thrilling to read about readers and writers because it's a bond that we and the author share implicitly, and perhaps connects us in a way books about no other occupation can. With this, the symbols and connections come with almost no effort, occurring to me in a pleasant and gentle manner. I liked finding myself and the things I know easily reflected in several moments across the years, on both sides of the ocean.

Read my review on 'aurora lector.'

For some reason, I found it difficult to get into for the first third.

Sì, la Munro è una scrittrice celebratissima, e ancora sì, scrive in modo impeccabile, in più l'argomento di questi racconti, che intrecciano storie di famiglia, si presentava allettante, nonostante ciò, mi sono annoiata mortalmente, perché tranne pochissime eccezioni mi sono trovata di fronte a una bellezza del tutto priva di vita.

I do get swept away by cover reviews and they only lead to disappointment! I was nowhere near as entranced as the reviewers, and despite being set up to be awed, I was not awed. This is a good book; well researched, well written, and well paced. I think the problems I had are all mine - sometimes you just can't engage. I found it difficult to perceive the text as a collection of short stories, albeit linked narratives. Falling into my own trap of 'novel' thinking, I worked too hard on trying to built a continuing narrative - one that does not exist, anymore than the narrative of landscape exists - a myth that Munro abley explodes in the final chapters. One event following another is not a narrative - it is a history, and the history of family is every bit as meaningless as the history of a nation, landscape, or planet - it is something that unfolds without direction. I suppose that is my problem. I seek storytelling and I found history - however enhanced by, or distorted by, imagination. There is depth here - great depth - but on this reading, at this time, in my current set of circumstances, I was not captivated.

Enjoyed this book but felt it was a bit scattered. In the beginning the author reconstructs the lives of her ancestors, based on records she found but also dramatising the things she did not know about. But further on, almost abruptly, she starts her own story and most of the book is about her growing up in Canada. I didn't buy this for the title, but there's very little of Castle Rock and Scotland in it. Instead there are a lot of considerations about farming, settlers, landscape, trees, a lot of Nature. Interesting, but not my kind of themes.