Munro’s Fictionalized Family History Solid as a ‘Rock’

There’s something exciting about antique family photographs and old letters: it only takes a little bit of imagination and curiosity to will yourself into the world of the yellowing paper, to imagine those people as flesh, and to realize the connection between yourself and them. Such glimpses of the past have undoubtedly inspired many to learn more about their family histories, to attempt to imagine what ancestors’ worlds and experiences might have been like and what they might have to do with one’s own life.

The same has apparently happened to Alice Munro. Munro, whose collections of intimate, thoughtful short stories have earned her vast acclaim, explains in the introduction to her newest—and potentially last—collection, “The View From Castle Rock,” that someone in every generation of her family has had a habit of writing long, detailed letters or journals.

Moved by these records, Munro has crafted an uneven but poignant collection of penetrating meditations that partially deal with the effects of religion and poverty on lives and attitudes across generations, but mostly focus on the intimate nature of identity, the way every detail of a life—worn linoleum, movie magazines, apple trees in bloom—becomes important to a person as she attempts to find her place in the world.

It is, she says, a fictionalized family history and memoir that contains “more attention to the truth of a life than fiction usually does. But not enough to swear on.” The result has all the delicacy and richness that have made Munro’s work famous, though it’s not without its forgivable flaws.

The book is divided into two parts, the first centering on the lives of her ancestors as they make their way from Scotland to Canada and the second consisting of Munro’s partially fictionalized recollections of her own life. For much of the first section, Munro’s attempts to imagine, describe and fill in the details of the lives of her ancestors in Scotland’s Ettrick Valley run into the problem that most historical narratives and memoirs have to deal with: real life doesn’t proceed at all like fiction. It has no well-structured plot or narrative, and one thing doesn’t elegantly lead to another.

As a result, the writer has to make do with some combination of describing the quotidian (a difficult task for past events that can only be accessed indirectly) and recalling anecdotes, neither of which Munro does compellingly.

Throughout the stories of her family’s sea voyage and the early days of their settlement in Canada, the anecdotes seem arbitrary and perfunctory, ending before they begin. There is little sense of place or vivid evocation of experience, and Munro’s attempts to imaginatively create an inner life for her characters seem flat.

There is mention of a brother’s friendship with a rich man’s ailing young daughter aboard the ship, and of a son’s bitter grief over his father’s death, but partly because there are so many characters—brothers, sisters, cousins, in-laws—none of these imagined glimpses into their lives go anywhere or feel very satisfying.

Things take a turn for the better—and remind the reader that other people’s families can actually be interesting—about a third of the way in, beginning with “The Wilds of Morris Township,” a story that reproduces an extensive passage from the recollections of a mid-nineteenth-century relative known as Big Rob.

He and two male cousins set out to “try their fortunes” in unsettled territory, and Rob’s practical but detailed description of the three men’s attempts to set up a household is full of the appealing roughness of the frontier. After the cousins bring in the rest of their relatives, it’s only a short time until the story catches up to the birth and life of the narrator, which is when the book really takes off.

Munro’s work has dealt predominantly with the lives of working-class young women, dissecting them with sympathy and sharp observation. Since the narrator of “Castle Rock” (presumably Munro herself, living out fictionalized situations) is such a character, Munro is at her strongest when she recalls her childhood and adolescence. The lively writing and intricately detailed descriptions of everything from the ramshackle farm where her father raised foxes for fur to the contents of the wedding trunk that her poor but meticulous family put together for her are entirely engrossing.

The emotional life of the narrator is also wonderfully well developed. When she goes to work as a maid for an affluent family at their summer home, we feel her loneliness and awkwardness in the presence of their lifestyle of tennis and hors d’oeuvres.

As the narrator grows older, she becomes more contemplative, and her exploration of her identity subtly becomes the main focus. Her fascination with the lives of her forebears is another facet of her drive to understand, to trace back attitudes about work and impractical dreams as far as possible to see how they change and how they stay the same.

Although the collection clearly has its weaknesses, Munro is exceptionally strong when she is working with the engrossing material of her own life. Her wonderful gift for using strong and limber sentences to collect her experiences allows her to share whatever significance she may have gathered from all of her searching and reimagining, adding her own unique recollections to the yellowing letters and journals of her ancestors.