The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro (McClelland & Stewart $34.99)

Reviewed by Mary Wolfe, Owner of The Village Bookshop, Bayfield.

Whether you’re a die-hard Alice Munro fan, or a novice to her writing, The View From Castle Rock should definitely by on your “must-read” list.

This latest book by Alice Munro is classified as “Fiction – Short Stories” just like the previous eleven books she has written; however, this one is different, both in content and intent.  It could be more appropriately classified as “Auto-Fiction” in that it imaginatively chronicles the author’s Laidlaw side of the family, from Scotland in the 1700s to current day Huron County, Ontario. 

The book is divided into two sections:  “Part One / No Advantages” follows the Laidlaw family as they leave their homeland in Scotland to cross the water to America; “Part Two / Home” brings us right up to current day with the author, Alice Munro, and her husband traveling around Huron County researching this very book.

The remarkable feature of this volume lays in the Foreword; a very personal and honest submission given to us like a precious gift by the author.  Alice Munro confides in us: “About ten or twelve years ago I began to take more than a random interest in the history of one side of my family, whose name was Laidlaw. There was a good deal of information lying around about them … I put all this material together over the years, and almost without my noticing what was happening, it began to shape itself here and there, into something like stories.  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.”

For this reader, taking the passage from Scotland to North America with these characters was a very visceral experience, thanks to the world-class talent of an author who lives among us here in Huron County. I feel honoured to have taken that journey.

Let me give Alice Munro the final word with more from the author’s Foreword; “These are stories.  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.”