Customer Reviews

The View from Castle Rock: Stories

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When it comes to writing short stories, Canadian author Alice Munro (RUNAWAY) is one of the best. She has published 11 new collections of short stories, a volume of SELECTED STORIES and a full-length novel. Her stories' timelines and subject matter range from birth to death and hit every thinkable topic in between. She is the master of unmasking feelings through words, and her landscapes are so vividly depicted that one can envision them jumping off the page and into reality.

In this latest collection, Munro turns her attention inward and delves deeper into her own experiences than ever before. These 12 stories --- including the epilogue's sole story entitled "Messenger" --- are slight variations and half-true fabrications of actual events that took place over the last few centuries on one side of her family's history. As she writes in the Foreword, "You could say that such stories pay more attention to the truth of a life than fiction usually does. But not enough to swear on. And the part of this book that might be called family history has expanded into fiction, but always within the outline of a true narrative."

The first half of THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK includes a set of five stories, all loosely based on her family's journey from the Ettrick Valley in Scotland to North America and the beginnings of their lives there. In "No Advantages," she describes her poor, hard-working Scottish ancestors in great detail --- half, what was; and the other half, what might have been. In "The View from Castle Rock," a young boy catches a glimpse of America --- and, in turn, his father's dreams --- while perched atop Castle Rock in Edinburgh. (Years later, the affirmation of his hunch that his father was drunk that day and that "America" was merely Fife makes the rest of the story seem all the sweeter.) Here, and continuing on into "Illinois," "The Wilds of Morris Township" and "Working for a Living," the hardships of daily toil, disease, famine and sacrifice, and the saving graces of religious faith and family loyalty, are felt on every page.

The second half of CASTLE ROCK is more loosely connected and consists of stories written during but not published in her recent short story collections. "They were not memoirs," she writes, "but they were closer to my own life than the other stories I had written, even in the first person...I was doing something closer to what a memoir does --- exploring a life, but not in an austere or rigorously factual way. I put myself in the center and wrote about that self, as searchingly as I could." And, as in the first section, the characters around this "self" take off and create a gloriously imagined life of their own.

What stands out most in these stories (and in most, if not all, of her others) is Munro's uncanny gift for turning a phrase and her ability to capture the essence of a moment within the bookends of a few carefully chosen words. In "Lying Under the Apple Tree" --- one of the best in the collection --- a young girl's first fumblings with lust and a Salvation Army boy of lower class is beautifully portrayed in the pairing of question and observation: "Or does it always seem natural to whisper in the dark? Or when you have gone weak in the legs but aching, determined, in another part of your body." In both "Home" and "What Do You Want to Know For?" --- two equally magnificent and ruminant pieces about the nature of belonging and feeling at home in one's present while yearning to grasp the unattainable past and lay claim to the unforeseeable future --- there are countless instances when the urge to stop and meditate on a paragraph or a sentence should certainly be heeded. These are the passages that encapsulate the marrow of life, and in Munro's capable hands they ring true every time.

Regarding her inspiration for THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK, she writes, "Some of the characters gave themselves to me in their own words, others rose out of their situations. Their words and my words, a curious re-creation of lives, in a given setting that was as truthful as our notion of the past can ever be." It is this natural talent for seamlessly fusing habit with possibility, permanence with intention, and fact with fiction, that makes Munro's stories such a unique pleasure to read.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

There's more than a hint of the Icelandic saga about some of the stories in this collection: the tough-minded matter-of-fact narration; the non-judgmental, external point of view. Only briefly and incidentally does Munro peek into any single character's self-awareness. Like the Icelandic sagas, these are chronicles of the author's ancestors, written with the implicit pride that such a family deserves to be chronicled. For anyone who has read Munro's previous stories, The View from Castle Rock will come as a surprise, and those who admire her emotionally acute self-dissection may be disappointed. I prefer to give Munro the latitude to write differently, particularly since she crafts her new genre so skillfully. This may not be her best collection ever or contain any story as good as her earlier masterpieces, but if there is any living writer in English more deserving of the Nobel than Alice Munro, I'd like to know who.

Added after re-reading earlier in the day: I need to retract one element of what I wrote before; the last story in the collection, "What Do You Want to Know For?", is a very great story, one of Munro's most polished ever.

These twelve new short stores are broken into three sections. Part One/No Advantages contains five tales from the author's ancestry as her family sails from Scotland to America. Part Two/Home includes six stories mostly occurring in the Lake Huron area that will be much more familiar to fans of Alice Munro. Finally a one tale Epilogue/Messenger that ties to two segments together. Each contribution is terrific and will enhance Ms. Munro's reputation as one of the best modern day short story writers. This reviewer's personal favorite is the "Roots" like first entry "No Advantages" though the others like the title story are well written, filled with depth so that the audience feels they are either in the Scotland or near Lake Huron, past and present. Once again Ms. Munro vividly brings to life the seemingly ennui everyday people, but makes each person seems so alive and vibrant with this superb anthology.

Harriet Klausner

Alice Munro is the finest writer of fiction today. That she works almost entirely in the short story form (and sets stories almost always in small town Canada)is much remarked upon by the heavyweight (male) novelists who write bigger, butcher books but genuflect before her, awestruck by the huge, quiet journeys her stories cover in the space of so few pages, so few words. She sometimes travel across decades in a single, sweeping, epic sentence, and she does so without breaking a sweat.

To say that The View from Castle Rock shows an artist "at the height of her powers" is, I suppose, as euphemistic as saying that this is a woman "of a certain age." OK, then. Alice Munro is both: She's getting older and getting greater. Her art and life now have the scope of maturity, and that maturity is the real "view" of the title.

In this collection she teases the borders between memoir and story, and she explores how the voices of family and heritage and autobiography grow up to become the narrative voices of fictions.

It's absolutely wonderful to watch the master at work.

I have only one quibble with the book: Its utterly unnecessary introduction in which Munro explains the form of the collection (this batch is based on family history, this batch I just made up, but none of it happened exactly like this, etc).

Come on, Alice. You the Man. You don't need to explain. Leave that stuff to the pygmies and the kids.

I cannot compare "The View from Castle Rock" to other works by Alice Munro. This is my first. The quality is excellent. There is not a weak entry among the stories. However, one must assume that this is not one of her elite collections, as the stories don't leap out as something that would qualify her as one of the very best writers. Perhaps it is the family history and autobiographical nature of the collection, as they don't provide an opportunity for fresh, creative ideas or inventive characterizations. With the background a relative given, Ms. Munro still writes beautifully and the stories flow so easily, much as if she were telling you them personally.

"Working for a Living" is exceptional, with its insight into her parents and a look at the spartan existence and struggle to get by that dominated the lives of her family and the rural poor and near-poor. Once the stories moved to Canada and more recent generations, the window into the daily grind and the ambition to rise above it may actually be considered the main theme. The window was both direct, as in her parents' jobs, or indirect, as in the fine segment where teenaged Alice worked for the summer as a maid for a wealthy family. The author moves easily between detached observation of the world around her and deep emotional attachment to the very same people and society.

Even though to a wealthy family or one more middle class, the characters in the second section may appear relatively homogeneous, one can see the class distinctions, at least as envisioned by the Laidlaws. Some people seemed content with their "place", whereas others, such as her family, wanted more, tried for more, and showed intellectual spark. Alice's summer as a maid naturally showed that the distinctions at home were relatively modest, when compared to the wealthy. Even so, it's not surprising that young Alice rose to a higher level as an adult, beyond just the much-risen tide of post-war Canadian life.

This collection is probably not the best primer for Alice Munro. The second part of the book reads more like excerpts from a memoir than her traditional "short stories". My interest has been piqued by these fine stories, and I will seek out another of her works.

In her latest collection of short stories, "The View From Castle Rock", Canadian writer Alice Munro says in the introduction that these `pay more attention to the truth of life than fiction usually does' - but she also adds that `not enough to swear on'. That is how her writing is in "The View From Castle Rock" - part fiction, part family history investigation.

Family and personal history have always been chief themes in her dozen collection of stories - but here these themes are more important since she is investigating her own family. As she points out, she has written in first person previously - but not like in these stories, in which she is closer to the subject than ever.

But above all, she defends that these `are stories' - in opposition of a non-fiction book. In this sense, fiction is the vehicle for something bigger that even truth couldn't reach. The first part of the book is called No Advantages and investigates the early history of her family beginning in Scotland in a place called Ettrick Valley. Her people - a part of her family called Laidlaw - move to America in hope of finding a better life.

In the stories of this section we come across characters such as Will O'Phaup, James Laidlaw and some unforgettable others. In this part we can also find one of the best stores of the collection - the one that gives the title to the book.

The second part, Home, we move closer to the present and the writer herself is a character in all of them. As she says also in the foreword, she put herself in the center and wrote about that self, as searchingly as she could. But since these are stories, one is never sure of what is true and what is fiction. But since Munro writer with such assurance, this the point - who cares? - what is important here is how she is able to bring life out of these stories.

Alice Munro is certainly one of the best short stories writers of our time. Her Chekhovian realism is a pleasure as is her storytelling ability. When one finishes this book, or any other of hers, the reader has the feeling of knowing a little more about human beings and life.

The art of short story writing is by no means dead. Looking at the stacks of new books and best sellers in a book store today would give you the impression that everything belongs to the full length novel. Alice Munro has created almost a new form of writing. She specializes in short stories that kind of fit together to tell a more complete story of her life.

The stories in this book definitely fall into that category. They are individual stories, complete and independent, but taken together seem to represent what has happened to a person going through life and growing up.

In the second part of this book, called 'Home' Ms. Munro has said that they had not been published before because they were too personal. This book, along with her other ten collections of short stories and one novel represent a body of work that isn't exactly autobiographical but which seem to represent her life.

Alice Munro is a master, and The View from Castle Rock contains some of her weakest writing as well as some of her strongest. The section "Home" is brilliant, and makes you feel this chill of Canada via Scotland, via Munro's tightly wound characters. the character Irmla may be my favorite fictional character of the last decade. I recommend this book for completists, but may not be the best introduction to Munro, "The Beggar Maid" is a better place to start. This book is still eminently worthwhile--the lady can't write a bad sentence.

The stories in this collection were closer to Munro's family history than her other collections, but she reassures the reader in the Foreword that they were stories and not memoirs.

Even so, I approached them with some caution, not being a huge fan of historical fiction that tended to boast more names, dates, and places than my mind had room for. What I look for ultimately is an engaging story.

When the first story, `No Advantages' traced her ancestors from Scotland, alarm bells that this was going to be a boring history lesson about people I had no interest in rang in my head. However, since this was Munro's work, I persevered.

And I am largely rewarded as the stories that followed (loosely connected by their characters) began to weave a narrative about frail but tenuous human lives. It is when the author puts herself into these stories (in various stages as a precocious child, a teenager with raging hormones, a young woman about to embark on her life as a newly-wed, a woman dealing with the uncertainty of her later years) that the reader is struck by her incisive observations of the foibles of human nature.

One such episode that illustrates this was in `Hired Girl' when she probed her summer employer about a dead daughter which she already knew about. `How strange that I did not question my right to pry, to barge in and bring this to the surface', she muses.

She goes on to rationalise it thus: `Part of the reason must have been that in the society I came from, things like that were never buried for good, but ritualistically resurrected, and that such horrors were like a badge people wore - or, mostly, that women wore - throughout their lives.'

That would have been reason enough, but a large part of Munro's appeal lies in her ability to delve deeper into herself for a personal reason on top of a sociological one: `Also it may have been because I would never quite give up when it came to demanding intimacy, or at least some kind of equality, even with a person I did not like.'

Precious.

I was very disapointed, I would of expected a real page turner like Runaway was, this isn't it. I wouldn't describe it as 'amazing short stories' like she has for her literary format description on the back of the book more like 'amazingly condenced long stories'. I recomend borrowing this from your local library first before diving into a possibly regretful purchase.