Ya no sé qué decir de Munro. Empecé el libro con miedo, ya que el primer capítulo/relato introductorio me hizo temer por encontrar un tostón.

Nada más lejos, a partir de ese momento, la escritora nos lleva a través de un viaje familiar a sus raíces más hondas, preguntándose por sus orígenes y haciendo lo que mejor sabe: escribir y narrar.

Hay un plus en esa autoficción de su vida y de la de su familia, mezclando realidad con invención hasta conseguir piezas redondas con temas como el amor, la infancia, la enfermedad, la familia y el paso del tiempo.

Una maravilla que me acerca más a la autora para seguir disfrutando de su obra poco a poco.

Although this is called a collection of stories, there is a progression through time of an family emigration saga from the late 1800's in Scotland to North America in the 50's Each story has a very slightly different tone but to my mind it could be called a novel. It is plain. It is ordinary. It is midwestern. Its characters are mundane, unremarkable, ordinary human beings. They work hard, scratch out a living, save a penny or two and do the best for them and theirs. They seek not to be noticed. They go to church or not. They have a strong sense of how they should live and will live and this accords totally with how they do live. Situational ethics never entered this universe. I think this is what made America great and I believe it's been captured here.

A book on my nightstand is usually a page or two interval between wakefulness and sleep. This one was more like 50 pages at a setting and this is a credit to the author.

I find this very odd -- the author seems to claim its the story of her family, but it's also a fictionalized set of stories...does that mean it's a FICTIONALIZED re-telling? If I didn't know better, it's not...but it is? It left me very confused and strangely put-off about what I was reading. The writing style is exactly what you'd expect from a master like Alice Munro, but I'm still left with a feeling of "but...but...". I just can't explain it.

I read The View From Castle Rock: Stories by Alice Munro for a BINGO challenge in a book club.
Alice Munro (nee Laidlaw) traced her family’s history from the 1700’s and discovered that each generation had produced a writer who recorded what had befallen him.
As the book traces the generations, we come to Robert Laidlaw, Alice’s father, and then at the centre of the book we reach Alice’s first person stories, set during her lifetime. Alice says she drew on personal experiences, “but then I did anything I wanted to with this material. Because the chief thing I was doing was making a story.” So it is not a memoir.

This collection of fiction is inspired by events in Alice Munro’s own family down through the generations, and ranges far across centuries and oceans.
3 stars

Commingling fiction with the literature of memoir, Alice Munro starts The View From Castle Rock a few centuries in the past. The interlocked stories in this family saga transport Munro’s ancestors from Scotland to America. She takes advantage of the distance made available by so much elapsed time to proceed with objectivity. Along these perilous ocean journeys and inhospitable wilderness destinations, premature death is expected and delivered in reportorial detail. As The View From Castle Rock moves to the history of Munro’s parents, and her own arrival on and departure from the homestead, mortality becomes personal. A careful, guarded reader is not quite aware when that cool, distanced objectivity has been overridden by an acute, personal point of view, a deeply invested guide who is so sure in exploring the poignant agonies of human connection that you will experience the emotions she uncovers as if they are your own.

A collection of stories of what the author imagined her ancestors lives would have been like .

I ricordi non stanno mai fermi, come per Alice (nel paese delle meraviglie). Anche il passato diventa un racconto che nel tempo muta spesso forma, e più il tempo passa più il racconto si arricchisce di nuovi dettagli e di nuove prospettive. Spesso mettiamo mano al passato, come scrittori che correggono, ampliano, riscrivono e ripubblicano la propria opera.
Nella prima parte di questa raccolta Alice Munro costruisce dei racconti immaginari partendo da notizie, aneddoti, lettere, testimonianze della sua famiglia (gli antenati Laidlaw). Nella seconda parte scrive di se stessa e della sua infanzia/adolescenza fino all'età adulta, raccontando episodi e momenti chiave della sua vita. Ma le esistenze descritte, apparentemente così diverse, così lontane nel tempo, sono invece molto vicine: tutti i personaggi vivono aspettative, dubbi, delusioni, sogni e speranze per il futuro.

Non sappiamo resistere alla tentazione di frugare nel passato, scartando testimonianze poco attendibili, collegando nomi isolati e date incerte e aneddoti, aggrappandoci a fili, volendo stabilire a tutti i costi un legame con i morti e perciò con la vita

Descobri este livro acidentalmente numa das bibliotecas públicas que frequento e confesso que foi o aspecto da capa que me fascinou primeiro (aqui a foto não é apelativa, mas garanto que ao vivo e a cores o efeito é diferente). A autora recordou-me o Nobel e outra colectânea de contos que li dela anteriormente e decidi arriscar.
The view from Castle Rock é seguramente a minha colectânea preferida de contos de Alice Munro.
Embora algumas histórias sejam mais empolgantes que outras (recordo em particular "The ticket" mas regra geral a segunda parte do livro fascinou-me mais), todo o conjunto justifica que a autora seja reconhecida como a rainha das short stories.
É sem dúvida uma contadora de histórias nata, com uma escrita clara mas não simples.
O meu género de literatura. 5 estrelas numa pontuação muito (se calhar demasiado) pessoal.

Alice Munro recibió el Premio Nobel por ser "la maestra del relato corto contemporáneo". Eso es. Una maestra, una absoluta maestra. Recuerdo que Vargas Llosa contaba que Faulkner fue el primer escritor que leyó con lápiz y papel a la mano. Alice Munro es eso para mí. Una absoluta muestra de maestría, destreza y conocimiento técnico, que solo se aprovecha tomando apuntes, aprendiendo, prestando máxima atención. Una enorme diseccionadora de la realidad humana. En estos cuentos, los primeros ubicados en el siglo XIX, va reconstruyendo de nuevo un entorno social absolutamente identificable como el propio. Avanza en el tiempo en la historia de su familia, hasta llegar a nuestros tiempos. El tono no ha cambiado, la sencillez y la maravillosa mirada detectora de prejuicios y silencios. Es decir, las historias de Munro son las historias de todos, de todos los tiempos, de todos los países, de todos los seres humanos. Una enorme, enorme escritora. Digo la palabra y estoy seguro de no equivocarme: perfecta.

Munro feels different here, and this collection feels valedictory, more intentionally so than any other (even if Dear Life is her stated retirement/summing up). I have always found her wry and clever but her humour is especially new for me here. I kept laughing. I think it is from the increased willingness to be vulnerable that comes from age, and a perspective that allows for more comfort, ease in oneself. The other thing that strikes me is how "deconstructive" she is. The same event she may have written about in a collection like "Open Secrets" or "Hateship" and reflected upon with a new realization about the way things truly were, or unfolded, adding a layer of psychological depth to the recounting of the immediate impression or interpretation of events her earlier self may have had at the time. Now, she takes this process of self-correction, of expansion, and makes it almost infinite. She reflects on previous reflection and confesses the narcissism, cowardliness, pretension, etc. that may have caused the previous reflection to take the stance that it did.
This is the approach that I think is "ultimate" -- humility, but also she is very generous, very loving. I read a blog post that described the first story in Part II, "Fathers," as a kind of apology to her father (apology is not the right word, but) for her thematic portrayal of parent-daughter relationships in "The Beggar Maid." Here, she offers him a lot of grace and seems to wonder at her own tendency to believe herself able and well-positioned to think of him the way she did before.
The writing is also perhaps some of the most beautiful I've read of Munro? Particularly by the midway point, it felt like you could not go a few pages without having an all-time great paragraph.
There is way too much to quote but I will end with the final portion of the final story in Part II:
Alice Laidlaw has just found out that the lump in her breast is likely benign.
"So this is the first time.
Such frights will come and go.
Then there'll be one that won't. One that won't go.
But for now, the corn in tassel, the height of summer passing, time opening out with room again for tiffs and trivialities. No more hard edges on the days, no sense of fate buzzing around in your veins like a swarm of tiny and relentless insects. Back to where no great change seems to be promised beyond the change of seasons. Some raggedness, carelessness, even a casual possibility of boredom again in the reaches of earth and sky.

On our way home from the city hospital I say to my husband, 'Do you think they put any oil in that lamp?'
He knows at once what I am talking about. He says that he has wondered the same thing."

The space and freedom gained from the seeming promise of a future, of life, allow for wondering. One is allowed to "live" again, "the corn in tassel, the height of summer passing." And one is allowed to read, to pursue questions that do not seem to have a useful answer. The whole collection, in its seeing what is close (as opposed to what is far, as in the cleared fields of the Epilogue), in its wandering and wondering, responds to the question posed by the title of this final story: What do you want to know for?

Perhaps this feels so valedictory to me because it reminds me of the final poem in Louise Gluck's "Winter Recipes from the Collective," "Song":
"And I say then I’m glad I dream
the fire is still alive"

n  Bettie's Booksn

Free online link to the one short story The View from Castle Rock:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

The emigration voyage of one family over the sea from Scotland to Nova Scotia, Canada. The year is 1918. A husband and pregnant wife, their young son, an elderly father and a brother and sister. It is the trip itself that is the focal point. The emotions and thoughts of each come through well. Fears, hopes and expectations are palpable. Use of the Scottish brogue makes the telling feel authentic

We learn also of how their lives will play out in the new land.

This was a good story. I liked it.