This was my first book by Alice Munro, who was recently named as the 2009 Man Booker International Prize winner. This book of stories is a personal, though fictional, history of her family’s emigration from Scotland and their settlement in Canada. It was on the NYT Notable Book list in 2007.
Munro illustrated the struggles of her ancestor immigrants very well. Though I am of German ancestry, I know many of my great-grandparents had many of the same challenges when they settled in Nebraska from Germany. (I would soooo love to read a fictionalized account of their story!)
I enjoyed this book very much, but some may find it a little slow and boring in parts. I’m very interested in family histories of immigration, so I appreciated both the stories and Munro’s writing. I have to wonder, though, were all European immigrants a little hard and cold? Perhaps just the act of survival took all their energy.
I am now curious to read more of Munro’s work for the Canadian Challenge III. If you have any you strongly recommend, please let me know.
2006, 349 pp.
