The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro

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The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro

Regular price $10.00
Condition - very good
<20 in stock
Regular price $10.00
Condition - very good
<20 in stock
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Summary

On a clear day, you could see 'America' from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather, James Laidlaw, when he had drink taken. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants, among them the author herself.

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The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro

'Alice Munro has a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America...She is speaking to you and to me right here, right now.' - Jonathan Franzen. On a clear day, you could see 'America' from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather, James Laidlaw, when he had drink taken. Then, in 1818, Laidlaw left the parish of 'no advantages', of banked Presbyterian emotions and uncanny tales - where, like his more famous cousin James Hogg, he was born and bred - and sailed to the new world with his family. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants, among them the author herself. They were a Spartan lot, who kept to themselves; showing off was frowned on, and fear was commonplace, at least for females...But opportunities present themselves for two strong-minded women in a ship's close quarters; a father dies, and a baby vanishes en route from Illinois to Canada; another story hints at incest; childhood is short and hazardous. This is family history where imperfect recollections blur into fiction, where the past shows through the present like the tracks of a glacier on a geological map. And woven into it are first-person stories that draw on material from Munro's own life...First love flowers under an apple tree while lust rears its head in a barn; a restless mother with ideas beyond her station declines painfully; a father farms fox fur and turkeys; a clever girl escapes to college and then into a hasty marriage. Beneath the ordinary landscape there's a different story - evocative, frightening, sexy, unexpected, gripping. Alice Munro tells it like no other.
Alice Munro is the author of The Beggar Maid (shortlisted for the Booker Prize) a novel and several outstanding collections of stories, including Open Secrets (winner of the WHSmith Literary Award), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and most recentlythe acclaimed Runaway. Her work appears regularly in The New Yorker and she is a winner of the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Prize in her native Canada.
SKU GOR001433181
ISBN 13 9780701179892
ISBN 10 0701179899
Title The View From Castle Rock
Author Alice Munro
Condition very good
Binding type Hardback
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Year published 2006-11-02
Number of pages 368
Prizes Short-listed for James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction) 2007
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us