Munro’s ancestors, the Laidlaws, originated in the Ettrick Valley of Scotland. (After Flodden, you could go among the dead and know the Ettrick men by their fine build and handsomeness, so the family say). They were sheep herders and small farmers, but literate, due to the peculiarly, at that period, Scottish system of a school in every parish. These shepherds sat in bothies on the moors and discussed literature and philosophy and religion with all the aplomb of a London salon; they also loved the supernatural tales of fairies and weird creatures and mysterious happenings which informed the local rural culture One ancestor was James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, author of that stinging satire on religion ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’, and progenitor of RL Stevenson’s psychological novels, although he was not much admired by his hard headed neighbours and connections. Another ancestress had a spat with Sir Walter Scott over his publishing of her ballads and folk tales in his ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ – ‘they were made for singin’ , no prenting, and noo they’ll never be sung mair.’

The Laidlaws emerge clearly from this odd fusion – educated, informed, credulous - Will Laidlaw’s adventures with the fairies and supernatural beings were as relished as the latest Presbyterian theological tract. They are in fact representative of the Scottish character of that time, brilliantly realised in a series of jewel like vignettes.

Emigration to Canada gives the collection its title. ‘The View from Castle Rock’ is the view of the sea and Fife to be seen from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. Grandfather told the family that Fife was America, their destination across that water. Presumably he was joking in his dour way, but the family never forgot that view.

The long sea voyage across the Atlantic is peopled by strongly drawn characters: the grandfather who lays down the law and likes to remind the womenfolk, with mealy mouthed relish, that they suffer from ‘Eve’s curse’; the dwarf sister who is unloved on two counts – she’s female, she’s tiny – and who finds emotional satisfaction in caring for the children of the family, even though she knows they will one day abandon her; the boy Walter who keeps a diary of the voyage (still in existence – Munro’s family recorded things and wrote articles for Blackwood’s Magazine); the dying girl passenger who befriends the diarist and remains a memory of joy to the boy for all the rest of his life; Agnes, the discontented sister-in-law, deeply moved by the tenderness of a doctor pressing her temples (it cannot have been easy to be married to a practical Laidlaw); and Andrew her husband, stirred to an unwonted desire for freedom of responsibility by the voyage (it cannot have been easy being married to Agnes); little James, beloved child, who squares up to grandfather in the only person as self absorbed as he is, and just when he is becoming interesting to the reader, ups and dies.

The emigration is a history of random fate – people meet and lose each other; people die unexpectedly. But birth and death are not the only randomness to distress in the book. Time and again, Mary the dwarf’s plight of being unloved and useful is repeated in the history of the women of the family. Couples marry and are bewildered later by why they did; they marry by default when the one they want is unfaithful; they are amazed at how easily a love will off and marry someone else; they fall ‘in love’ whatever that means and aren’t sure if they even like the person as Munro explains so painfully in the story ‘Lying Under The Apple Tree’.

Everywhere in evidence is ‘the curse of Eve’, that condition which means that women are judged more harshly than men (a heavy reader? But is she getting her housework done? Selling furs successfully at a hotel? Must she be different? Is she loose, a gang of smirking men wonder about an innocent young girl who does something unexpected). This is Munro territory, the world where it counts against a girl if she rides a bike after the age of twelve and where a girl breaks into a cold sweat when trying on her wedding clothes and doesn’t realise why: the fact is she lives surrounded by women with compromise marriages and where it is unusual when a couple are said to be fond of one another. In Munro’s world, women drift blindly into the roles allocated them by society’s expectations. So too do the men. It is disappointment and dissatisfaction which are so vividly explored through the story of an emigration, through tales woven from the scraps of lives left behind by a host of characters long dead but resurrected in this colourful collection.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.