'This is a remarkable book... anyone who has ever felt the pull of the secret past should read it and marvel' Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

The world's finest living short-story writer turns to her family for inspiration; and what follows is a fictionalised, brilliantyl imagined version of the past. From her ancestors' view from Edinburgh's Castle Rock in the eighteenth century, to her parents' thwarted ambitions in Ontario, and her own awakening in '50s Canada, Munro effortlessly weaves fact and myth to create an epic story of past and present, proving that fiction has much to tell us about life.

'A memoir that has taken a breath, and expanded itself beyond the genre and beyond the confines of one life' Hilary Mantel, Guardian

'Beautifully written, this delicat interweaving of fact and fiction is Munro on top form' Daily Mail

'Unbelievably good' Literary Review

'A rare and fascinating work, in which the past makes sense of the present and the present makes sense of the past' Karl Miller, Guardian

'Incomparable' Independent