Finished Castle Rock

It's not often that I read books in which I can sympathize with what's going on with the characters. Or, that might not be the right way of putting it--a book where I see on the page something that I've felt or didn't even realize I felt. I remember thinking that about Middlemarch, about the experiences of several characters, both male and female.

I had this feeling at several points in Castle Rock. The first half itself--the impulse to record family history--is something I am still trying to manage. The second half was more about the personal experiences of the main character/author (again, this book is not quite fiction, not quite memoir), with moments from her childhood, early teens, late teens, very young adult, and late middle age (which tied back into the first half of the book).

One theme I kept seeing was the author's consciousness the different strata to which families--even people--belonged. Or, the community in which she grew up placed families in different strata, while the author herself pointed out that on top of that level of separation lay a different grid, maybe regardless of class and by which she knew that she was different, which made her sometimes ask what was wrong with her.

Anyway, good book, I would highly recommend it. It makes me want to revisit the only other Munro I've read (especially since I just saw Away from Her, which is based on a story from that book). For now, I've got a nice piece of fluff to work on: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, on which "True Blood" is based.

Oh, as for the incongrous chicklit cover--the only appearance of a bathing suit in the second half hasa to do with swimming off of a dock in the dark, no beaches or anything that relaxed looking. The only justification I can think of is that most of the second half focuses on the author/narrator's girlhood. But that's a stretch.