It wasn't easy reading this book for me from the beginning. So as it is a story collection, I flipped through it looking for something that might grab my attention. Having almost read all that Munro wrote, I found this collection the least I was interested to read.

So, I will highlight the three stories that I liked.

1) The hired girl
Munro explores how a seventeen years old girl dealt alone with a world that is superior to her. As degradation of her financial status, the narrator had to work as a maid. Brilliantly, Munro shows and doesn't tell the girl's trials to keep herself on an equal footing with the family that she working at.

2) the ticket
Before her wedding, The narrator is given a ticket by her grandmother as a plan B in case she changes her mind. Through the stories of her grandmothers and her own parents' marriages, the narrator starts to have some doubts about her upcoming marriage.

3) Home
The narrator comes back to her home for an unusually long stay. She notices the change that her stepmother brought to that home and to her father's life. She comes to a moment when we question ourselves if should go back to a life that we long deserted, or should keep on moving in life that doesn't add a lot to us.

Dull.
And disappointingly so.
If you went to college or have read any book reviews in the last 20 years, then you KNOW Alice Munro's work is one of the canons of modern literature (because all your big-brained English teachers say so)....these stories jut fall flat, never ripening into the colorful, fully fledged narratives that one might expect from someone who's won every lit prize known to man.
The stories in "Castle Rock" are based on Munro's own ancestors in Scotland and their journey to America, but instead of people who have depth and energy, we end up with lackluster, paper doll-like figures whose feelings are ever so subtly hinted at but never fleshed out.
I'd read the title story years ago in college or another collection -- can't remember which now -- and I had this on my shelves for years ever since looking forward to finally sitting down to read the entire collection, but I actually feel like I'm in college again -- reading "important" work by "important" writers and trying to figure out why they're considered this way.
I'll still read Munro's other work, but this felt like one of those late-career books published by one of the greats -- and not edited much -- because they knew her name on the dust jacket would sell.

Leer a un/a premio Nobel siempre es agradecido. Es tener la certeza de que vas a leer algo bien escrito, estructurado, como si estuvieras probándote un traje o vestido nuevo confeccionado por un diseñador de renombre.
Con Alice Munro pasa así: escribe bonito. Sin más. No cuenta historias complicadísimas, ni crea universos fantásticos. En este libro habla de su vida, la de sus antepasados, sus amores, sus vidas, sus casas, sus historias. Y a veces uno piensa que podría estar contando la historia de su propia familia.
Quizá porque los últimos libros que he leído me habían dejado un poco desasosegado, éste que acabo de terminar me ha gustado tanto. Porque habla de las cosas normales que vivimos y las contextualiza y es un placer y un lujo ver que formamos parte de un todo que nos lleva adelante como un torrente, con su nacimiento tranquilo y silencioso, su juventud turbulenta y rápida, su madurez ancha y caudalosa, y su salida de este mundo y llegada al mar serena y silenciosa...
Un placer de libro!

My interest in this book was stronger in the first half, but petered out a little. The closing stories are personal, and sweet, and offer a glimpse into the mind and world of Alice Munro (which is certainly a priceless gift), but they do not measure up to the compression and depth in her best work of pure fiction.

Fans of Alice Munro will love this book, because Alice is easy to love, but fans of her short fiction might not be universally impressed.

I noticed this before and here it is even more prevalent. The further back Munro goes in time, the less I enjoy her short stories. The View from Castle Rock is a collection of short stories about her ancestors, reaching back to 18th century rural Scotland, spanning the emigration to America until her own youth and adulthood.

The stories might or might not be true to life. The ones about her ancestors could have happened, but are speculative with a few hard facts thrown into the mix. The ones about herself are closer to the truth. It is impossible to discern though where fiction and fact separate.

Coming back to my initial statement, the stories in Scotland are the weakest and frankly expendable. They are Munro's form of genealogy with little of interest for anybody not sharing this ancestry. I mostly enjoyed the more recent stories but this is the weakest story collection of Munro I've read so far.

The book that finally made me love Alice Munro. The stories I'm trying to write. Seriously, I loved this so much. Part One is a series of stories commingling Munro's genealogical research about one part of her father's family and her story-telling about what their lives might have been. She weaves together information she claims to have learned with visits to graveyards and archives along with bits of diaries and stories about what happened to her ancestors. What's real, what isn't? It's impossible to say. Did the journal of her relative survive the transatlantic journey and get passed down in the family? Who's to know? It seems real enough. And it doesn't matter. Are these family legends, or the product of Munro's own imagination? Seemless. Flawless. Part Two is a series of fictionalized memoirs apparently about her own life. Part two extends and expands the metaphors. These powerful stories successfully blur the line between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. The stories are unique, and yet they are part of the fabric of all our lives. I can't say enough wonderful about this collection.

Roza Hakmen çevirisi Alice Munro hikâyeleri; görünce insanın ağzı sulanıyor. Bittiğinde de en başta uyandırdığı heyecanın hakkını veriyor.

En baştan not düşeyim: Bence bu kitap Alice Munro'ya başlama kitabı değil. Evet, Alice Munro'nun kendi kökenini, hayatını anlattığı bir kitap, ama kitaba ilgi duyabilmek için Alice Munro'ya ilgi duyabilmek gerekiyor.

Kitaba gelirsek, Alice Munro benim en beğendiğim 5-6 yazardan biri diyebilirim. Ölmeden önce yazdığı her şeyi okumak istediğim az sayıda yazardan biri. Sevgili Hayat'tın son bölümlerinde de kendi hayatıyla ilgili öyküleri vardı ve çok beğenmiştim. Bu kitabın ikinci yarısının da o hikâyelere benzediğini söyleyebilirim. İlk bölümü ise Alice Munro'nun 1800-1900'lerde yaşayan akrabalarını araştırıp hikâyeleştirmesi şeklinde. Ben oradaki hikâyeleri de çok beğendim. Bilhassa gemi yolculuğunun olduğu hikâye en beğendiğim hikâye oldu.

Alice Munro'nun yazdığı şeylerin tartışılacak pek bir tarafı yok gibi geliyor bana. Sadece anlayamadığım bir şey var: Bu kadar sakin, bu kadar arabesk olmaktan uzak anlatırken, nasıl bu kadar hüzünlü hikâyeler anlatmayı beceriyor?

Una historia de familia muy personal de la autora.

Con la narración viajamos a su tierra natal, a sus campos, a sus historias familiares, sus migraciones.

quizás algo difícil de leer y lento pero bello.

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3.5 stars. An interesting, unique novel that reads like a memoir. The author writes about her grandparents, the Laidlaws, the family moving to Illinois, her parents farming failure in Ontario and the author’s working to make a living.

In the foreword the author writes that the stories ‘were not memoirs but they were closer to my own life than the other stories I have written, even in the first person.’ Alice Munro was exploring her own life but not in a rigorously factual way.

Readers new to Alice Munro should firstly read her wholly fictional short stories collections. I have read ‘The Love of a Good Woman’ (a 5 star read for me!), ‘The Beggar Maid’ and ‘Lives of Girls and Women’. I would recommend reading any of these three books before reading ‘The View of Castle Rock’.

Readers interested in Alice Munro’s life will find this book a worthwhile read, however, the novel is not very revealing of who the author is! Rather, you gain an appreciation of the social environment she grew up in.

This book was first published in 2006.

wydaje mi się, że ta książka nie odkrywa przed nami pełnego potencjału i talentu Alice Munro jako noblistki, ale tego będę dalej szukać w kolejnych pozycjach od niej. mimo wszystko spodobał mi się sposób, w jaki narratorka wracała do przeszłości i swoich korzeni - druga połowa była już nieco gorsza

Yo adoro a esta señora, pero pucha que me aburrí

A book recommended by a wonderful second cousin who - like me - has been digging into our family history and Scottish ancestry. Munro's family came from Scotland (from a different part than my ancestors), and settled as farmers in Ontario (also in a different part than my ancestors); it was still interesting to read about how decisions were made to leave, the passage, and the years of settling in. While Munro's retelling of her family's history was somewhat fictionalised, it is based on research and stories from her parents and grandparents. The book also has some short stories from more recent times, and they tie back into some of the earlier pieces. It is difficult to tell what may be autobiographical and what is fiction, but this does not detract from the book at all.