Product Description

Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, these stories are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart. Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, they celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition - in the face of love and loss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25831 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Alistair Macleod's Island: The Complete Stories begins "Once there was a family with a Highland name who lived beside the sea." The 1985 entry continues, "And the man had a dog of which he was very fond." And there you have the basic elements of an Alistair MacLeod story: Dog, Family, and Sea. The author--whose 2000 novel No Great Mischief won him a measure of long-overdue acclaim--shuffles these elements into a surprisingly infinite variety of configurations, always with the same precise, confident, quiet language.

His big theme is the abandonment of the rural. Though his characters live in the fishing communities of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, the seaside isn't a place where they dwell contentedly. In half the stories, young men and boys feel a pull toward academe and the centre of the country. In the other half, academically successful middle-aged men return to the wild eastern coast of Canada to try to reclaim the life they left behind. Both dilemmas are impossible to resolve--no one can be both a city mouse and a country mouse--and MacLeod wisely doesn't offer easy solutions.

What makes the writing sing, though, is the specificity of his descriptions of rural life. He tells you how things work, exactly: "The sheep move in and out of their lean-to shelter, restlessly stamping their feet or huddling together in tightly packed groups. A conspiracy of wool against the cold." The people here are ultimately defined by the physical world, and MacLeod has a farmer's visceral feel for geography. As he writes in "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood": "Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast; far away but still the nearest land, and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit, to say nothing of North America's more western cities; seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination's mist." This is regional fiction in the best sense: it belongs to one perfectly evoked place. --Claire Dederer, Amazon.com

Review
'Beautifully crafted stories: elegiac, honest, proud, and both eloquent and taciturn, like their subjects...a wonderfully talented writer' Margaret Atwood; 'It is hard to think of anyone who can cast a spell the way Alistair MacLeod can' Alice Munro; 'Rarely does a great writer offer himself to us with an oeuvre so complete' New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews

a priceless collection of ageless stories
After the novel 'No Great Mischief' comes MacLeod's true masterpieces: this small but superb collection of 16 stories, comprising three decades of writing. Many of these will be familiar to British readers but others from 'As Birds Bring Forth the Sun'- never published in the UK - and two new ones make this a must-buy volume, the only one to hold all his published shorter fiction. It is hard to pick out the best: even the superficially slighter ones have words and images which haunt you long after the book has been put down. I defy anyone to find a better volume of modern short stories.

Just Superb Short Story Writing
I came to this book simply because the introduction was written by McGahern, who for may money is one of the greatest writers in the English language today; that he seemed to enjoy MacLeod's work seemed recommendation enough.

Following on, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough either. This is short story writing at its very, very best.. And it's wonderful to discover a new writer who - while he has the concise style of a Hemmingway, Carver, Ford or Wolfe, has a very individual and unique style, no doubt forged by the landscape and country that he is rooted in.

A collection of short stories benefiting from an original voice, clear style, and obvious love for the subject matter
I very much enjoyed this book. While I am against short stories in principle -- once you get involved enough to care about the characters, the tale abruptly ends -- Mr. Macleod's original voice, clear style, and obvious love for his subject matter made up for what I consider the usual failings of the short story. The bleak landscape of Cape Breton, the harsh lives of its inhabitants and the quiet despair of the people and animals who work there is painted with a very sure hand in each story.

I must admit that, looking back, most of the stories have meshed together in my mind. They all seem to contain the same elements: the son of a poor fisherman/dock worker/coal miner with a tough-as-nails mother struggles to better himself and leave Cape Breton behind, but finds that he is inexplicably tied to the place and its fate and is destined to repeat the failings of his father. Of course, there are exceptions such as the story of the Montreal lawyer visiting his parents, but the theme of inherited misery and pre-destination is always there.

Regardless, I liked the book a lot and vote it a solid "buy".