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The View from Castle Rock

alice munro

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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.

349 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2006
Literary awards
james tait black memorial prize, o. henry award, 

This edition

Format
349 pages, Hardcover
Published
November 7, 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN
9781400042821
ASIN
1400042828
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

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alice munro

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Collections of short stories of noted Canadian writer Alice Munro of life in rural Ontario include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) and Moons of Jupiter (1982); for these and vivid novels, she won the Nobel Prize of 2013 for literature.

People widely consider her premier fiction of the world. Munro thrice received governor general's award. She focuses on human relationships through the lens of daily life. People thus refer to this "the Canadian Chekhov."

(Arabic: أليس مونرو)
(Persian: آلیس مانرو)
(Russian Cyrillic: Элис Манро)
(Ukrainian Cyrillic: Еліс Манро)
(Bulgarian Cyrillic: Алис Мънро)
(Slovak: Alice Munroová)
(Serbian: Alis Manro)

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
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TheWhiteDemon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This is a wonderful, beautifully written collection of stories. Ms. Munro has a real gift for writing stories that touch the reader. She's able to do this because her stories are all about real life and real experiences of everyday people.
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Zheng56
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This review is for the title story only.
The View from Castle Rock is a short story by Alice Munro. In the early part of the 19th century, a family boards a ship for the very first time. They spend 6 weeks aboard and each person’s personality and desires come to life. This family is making their way to a new life in Nova Scotia from Scotland. Old James has dreamed of this opportunity without realizing what he will actually miss from his Scottish home. He spends the entire trip telling everyone he meets story after story about his homeland. He has brought his family with him, two sons and a daughter. Mary is the oldest and takes on the care and protection of her brother Andrew’s 2 year old son, young James. She is an eccentric type, unmarried and really only connects with her little nephew. Agnes is Andrew’s pregnant wife who gives birth on board. Walter befriends a smart and curious young girl named Nettie who has been sick on the journey. They spend time getting to know one another while he sits in the upper deck writing a journal of this adventure. We get a true sense of coming to the New World as an adventure for this family who looks forward to a simple farming life in their new home.
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Amaterasu803
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Undici racconti per raccontare di sé e del rapporto con la famiglia e la terra, un rapporto talmente stretto da non poter concepire l'una senza l'altra.
Undici racconti che sono una dichiarazione d'amore verso la propria terra, un amore difficile, non scontato, perché in un mondo di contadini, costretti a stare sempre all'aperto per necessità, mostrarsi interessati alla vita all’aperto per ragioni di non assoluta praticità, o fantasticare sul concetto di Natura – anche solo utilizzare quella parola, Natura – poteva farti ridere dietro.
La mia valutazione è di quattro stelle che avrebbero anche potuto essere cinque se la profondità dell'analisi psicologica fosse stata la stessa in tutti i racconti, invece i primi tre non vanno oltre la cronaca e l'arricchimento delle memorie familiari, recuperate da lettere e diari.
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Chinaz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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One of the best types of memoir. This is history and geography and has some great stories too.
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majors00
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Alice Munro teje un relato único, lo más parecido a una novela que una gran cuentista puede armar, una búsqueda de sus orígenes a la vez que una búsqueda de si misma para intentar comprender porqué huyó de allí.
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Natsuki_Kazuma_1
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A fascinating experiment, comparing your personal life with that of your ancestors who first set foot on the American soil: this is what Ms Munro does in this book and the result is excellent. She doesn't risk unnecessary parallelisms between the XVIIIth century and the XXth, she just puts the two "histories" side by side to see what comes out. The reader is free to draw any conclusions (if any are to be drawn) or simply enjoy the narrations. No, says Munro, the past doesn't always explain the present, but it's worth knowing where you come from.
This is my first Munro and certainly not the last!
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