I read a short-story today by Alice Munro called, “The View from Castle Rock.” I think it is probably one of the more competent stories I’ve read in some time. The voice, tone and feel of this story all seem perfectly in sync. I found it in the 2006 Best American Short Stories that I have been reading ever so slowly for some time. (You can find a link to it in the blog sidebar under “now reading.”) The story was originally published in The New Yorker.

It is essentially an account of a family’s journey from Scotland to America as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Each character has their own personality and destiny, and there is joy and happiness and sadness and sorrow aplenty for all along the way. It is kind of a character study of a family and an era.

I can imagine attempts at similar stories that might be done as exercises in what to write, where the mission is to go to a local old graveyard and find the oldest headstones for a good sized family from 200 years ago and then write a story about what their lives must have been like. But I can imagine very few outcomes as well done as this.

I don’t understand how it happens that so much time passes when I don’t do any reading, but I really enjoyed this story. Hopefully it will act as inspiration to read some more.