The View from Castle Rock

An evocative and compelling compilation of short fiction by the award-winning author of The Love of a Good Woman and other works journeys from the Scotland of the author's own family heritage and a ship en route to the New World, to a family odyssey from Illinois to Canada and in and around Lake Huron. Reader's Guide available.

Zusatztext Masterful. . . . Munro really does know magic: how to summon the spirits and the emotions that animate our lives. The Washington Post Book World Fascinating. . . . Munro's powers are at their peak. . . . She continues to charge forward! shining a light on what is most fearsome and true. Chicago Tribune Exhilarating. . . . [Munro's] ability to travel into the minds and feelings of people long dead is uncanny. The New York Times Book Review Revelatory. . . . A work of aching authenticity. The Boston Globe Praise from fellow writers: Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it! and it still does. Jhumpa Lahiri She is one of the handful of writers! some living! most dead! whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion. Jonthan Franzen The authority she brings to the page is just lovely. Elizabeth Strout She's the most savage writer I've ever read! also the most tender! the most honest! the most perceptive. Jeffery Eugenides Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.Julian Barnes She is a short-story writer whoreimagined what a story can do. Loorie Moore There's probably no one alive who's better at the craft of the short story. Jim Shepard A true master of the form. Salman Rushdie A wonderful writer. Joyce Carol Oates Informationen zum Autor Alice Munro Klappentext WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013Alice Munro mines her rich family background, melding it with her own experiences and the transforming power of her brilliant imagination, to create perhaps her most powerful and personal collection yet. A young boy, taken to Edinburgh's Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father's dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro's art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives. Leseprobe No Advantages This parish possesses no advantages. Upon the hills the soil is in many places mossy and fit for nothing. The air in general is moist. This is occasioned by the height of the hills which continually attract the clouds and the vapour that is continually exhaled from the mossy ground . . . The nearest market town is fifteen miles away and the roads so deep as to be almost impassable. The snow also at times is a great inconvenience, often for many months we can have no intercourse with mankind. And a great disadvantage is the want of bridges so that the traveller is obstructed when the waters are swelled . . . Barley oats and potatoes are the only crops raised. Wheat rye turnips and cabbage are never attempted . . .There are ten proprietors of land in this parish: none of them resides in it.Contribution by the Minister of Ettrick Parish, in the county of Selkirk, to the Statistical Account of Scotland, 1799 The Ettrick Valley lies about fifty miles due south of Edinburgh, and thirty or so miles north of the English border, which runs close to the wall Hadrian built to keep out the wild people from the north. The Romans pushed farther, and built some sort of fortifications called Antonine's Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth, but those did not last long. The land between the two walls has been occupied for a long time by a mix of peopleCeltic people, some of whom came from Ireland and were actually called Scots, Anglo-Saxons from the south, Norse from across the North Sea, and possibly some leftover Picts as well.The high stony farm where my ...

Autorentext

Alice Munro

Klappentext

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013 Alice Munro mines her rich family background, melding it with her own experiences and the transforming power of her brilliant imagination, to create perhaps her most powerful and personal collection yet.

A young boy, taken to Edinburgh's Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father's dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro's art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives.

Zusammenfassung

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013

Alice Munro mines her rich family background, melding it with her own experiences and the transforming power of her brilliant imagination, to create perhaps her most powerful and personal collection yet.

 

A young boy, taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro’s art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives.

Leseprobe
No Advantages*This parish possesses no advantages. Upon the hills the soil is in many places mossy and fit for nothing. The air in general is moist. This is occasioned by the height of the hills which continually attract the clouds and the vapour that is continually exhaled from the mossy ground . . . The nearest market town is fifteen miles away and the roads so deep as to be almost impassable. The snow also at times is a great inconvenience, often for many months we can have no intercourse with mankind. And a great disadvantage is the want of bridges so that the traveller is obstructed when the waters are swelled . . . Barley oats and potatoes are the only crops raised. Wheat rye turnips and cabbage are never attempted . . .There are ten proprietors of land in this parish: none of them resides in it.Contribution by the Minister of Ettrick Parish, in the county of Selkirk, to the Statistical Account of Scotland, 1799 The Ettrick Valley lies about fifty miles due south of Edinburgh, and thirty or so miles north of the English border, which runs close to the wall Hadrian built to keep out the wild people from the north. The Romans pushed farther, and built some sort of fortifications called Antonine's Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth, but those did not last long. The land between the two walls has been occupied for a long time by a mix of people—Celtic people, some of whom came from Ireland and were actually called Scots, Anglo-Saxons from the south, Norse from across the North Sea, and possibly some leftover Picts as well.The high stony farm where my family lived for some time in the Ettrick Valley was called Far-Hope. The word *hope, as used in the local geography, is an old word, a Norse word--Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gaelic words being all mixed up together in that part of the country, as you would expect, with some old Brythonic thrown in to indicate an early Welsh presence. Hope means a bay, not a bay filled with water but with land, partly enclosed by hills, which in this case are the high bare hills, the near mountains of the Southern Uplands. The Black Knowe, Bodesbeck Law, Ettrick Pen—there you have the three big hills, with the word hill in three languages. Some of these hills are now being reforested, with plantations of Sitka spruce, b…