I finished Alice Munro's book of short stories, "Castle Rock," and was moved by her respectful depiction of the people in her family tree and childhood. The stories of ancestors are of course fictionalized, and they move on to stories apparently from her childhood in rural Ontario.
The stories themselves are slight narratives. They're less important than the characters, their thoughts, their obsessions, their moments of in-character or out-of-character behavior. I got caught up in them and felt fondly of the people, even those who weren't likable. It's so old fashioned in some ways. She almost seems lazy, simply recording seemingly inconsequential events lived on a boat crossing the Atlantic, of a young girl on isolated roads, of a father in a barnyard. The events barely come together to make a story. But I feel as if I can still see their faces, and expressions, and gestures.
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