num_pages: 349
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.
language: English
title: The View from Castle Rock
titlecomplete: The View from Castle Rock
characters: Ancestors and the author.
genres: Canada, Short Stories, Canadian Literature, Historical Fiction, Nobel Prize, Literary Fiction, Literature, Scotland, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 5088
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: O. Henry Award
category: 'What Do You Want To Know For?'
publisher: Alfred A. Knopf