Alice Munro forms a few family stories into tales of fiction.

_________SPOILERS AHOY______________

As someone who is interested in family history, I think it says something that I thought this book was dry. The stories were well told, but I as a reader wasn't with a character long enough to invest in any of them. Generally when a collection of stories is put into a book there is an overarching theme to them, some message the author wants to convey. This book just felt like rambling.

I have a feeling this book didn't do very well commercially because the edition I read has a picture of a woman sunbathing on a bright pink towel. I may be wrong, but I can't remember any character that went anywhere near a beach. Fox farms, long days of farming Ontario lands, the journey on a ship from Ireland all come to mind when I think of what I've read. No beaches. I would have never thought this book would be family folk tales based on the cover.

Alice Munro is incredible. This wasn't my very favorite of her work--it is a series of connected stories rather than completely disparate tales--but it is still a triumph of writing.

a pleasant story about where we come from, loosely based on the author's actual lineage. i enjoyed reading this but ultimately found the writing a little ho hum for my taste. not particularly passionate or insightful. a worthwhile read, nonetheless.

Good story, but disappointing. I was reading it in order to get a feel for what it was like for my great grandparents to come to this country, and the book jacket lead me to believe that the book was about the Author’s family and their experience as emigrants.
That was true for the first 25% of the book. The rest was about the author. While it was interesting, it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Alice Munro is one of the great short fiction writers out there today, a well-known fact, as far as I know. This collection of stories is actually inspired by and concerns Munro's family, her ancestors that immigrated to Canada from Scotland and her grandparents and parents. The stories she spins here are as startling and engrossing as any of her work, but are tinged with something extra--mortality, discussions of death or just the old icy grip of death hovering over past generations and concerning our author in her present life. In some ways, that entrances the reader more, and in other ways, the constant of an end to things leave her remembrances of early childhood as half-fulfilled, half-full of the promise she is also trying to put into them.

That being said, Munro's ability to pull the story of her family across the Canadian wilds is haunting and impressive, and tells us a lot about our fascination with the journeys those before us make.

A writer's foray into her Scottish ancestors and how they came to be in north America. Part historical research and part autobiography, Alice Munro writes with such depth of feeling. Humour, candid observation and sadness without judgement on her part makes this a beautifully written account of her family.

Not her typical writing since it was biographical but definitely interesting to hear about her background.

I usually really like Alice Munro, but this book was just not something I could get into.

I meant to read one short story for my book group. We had agreed that we should all read a short story by Alice Munro and share our thoughts at our next meeting. I picked “The Wilds of Morris Township” just because it had Morris in the title, and then I just kept reading to the end of the book. It was fascinating. I loved all the people and her descriptions of life in the twentieth century in rural Ontario. I liked how it felt like she was just reminiscing over coffee with me. I’m not sure if I’ll go back and read the first part of the book but that’s just me being restless - I think I just want to look at the other Munro collections I got from the library and read some of her other stories. I haven’t been familiar with her work before and I’m so glad it was suggested to me.

Predictably excellent, though I hold Munro to a standard far higher than other authors and something about this kept me from diving excitedly into it as I have her other books. One thing I noticed that puzzled me was the long descriptions of landscape -- these left me somehow numb, though for no good reason, since they're as well-written as everything else. It's a very good book but a slower, gloomier read: there's a weight of quiet doom about it that I felt I needed to take in small doses.