Novels
- No Great Mischief (1999)
Collections
- The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976)
- As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986)
- Island (2000)
Novellas
- To Every Thing There Is a Season (2004)
- Remembrance (2013)
Novels Book Covers
Collections Book Covers
Novellas Book Covers
Alistair MacLeod Books Overview
No Great Mischief
Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it. Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto’s skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely. From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
The stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood are remarkably simple a family is drawn together by shared and separate losses, a child’s reality conflicts with his parents memories, a young man struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father. Yet each piece of writing in this critically acclaimed collection is infused with a powerful life of its own, a precision of language and a scrupulous fidelity to the reality of time and place, of sea and Maritime farm. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, the seven stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood map the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child.
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun
The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their own peculiar mortality against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change. His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Island
Sixteen spare, evocative masterworks: men and women acting out their own peculiar mortality against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton Island. Until the recent publication of Alistair MacLeod’s first novel, No Great Mischief, his reputation as one of Canada’s most important writers rested entirely on the stories collected in this book, and on this basis he was included in the Modern Library’s 200 greatest writers in English since 1950. These stories are about death, family ties, and the pull of traditions transplanted from Scotland to a harsh New World. Reviewing MacLeod in the New York Times, Louise Erdrich wrote, ‘the young eventually realize that though they speak English, the old language Gaelic is internalized, that the sound and meaning of it rise to haunt them in the same way that the ancient mythologies and superstitions, spun through generations, exert an ineluctable hold.’ Joyce Carol Oates gives us a precise image of the experience of reading these stories: ‘that sudden feeling of insecurity that comes to a traveler in unmapped country; a sense of immediacy, cinematic in its vividness.’
To Every Thing There Is a Season
The story is simple, seen through the eyes of an 11 year old boy. As an adult he remembers the way things were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two year old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think I ll be a snowman. They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on the Lake boats in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of clothes back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift wrapping role of Santa Claus. The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift. For readers from nine to ninety nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers.
Related Authors