Product Description

The sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely,
He has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years.

A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155685 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-12
• Released on: 2002-03-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.com Review
"Once there was a family with a Highland name who lived beside the sea." So begins "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun," a 1985 entry from Island. The story 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 center 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 exactly how things work: "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

From Library Journal
One of Canada's most important writers, MacLeod grew up in Cape Breton. Here he presents a powerful collection of short stories set on Canada's Eastern shore, where the traditions and Gaelic language of transplanted Scots continue in a harsh new world. All of these affecting, elegiac tales focus on the strong ties of loving kin, particularly the link between fathers and sons. Fathers share the experience of work with their sons, and boys puzzle over family events and tragedies and learn to be men in the close-knit communities. Sadly, as times change, fathers lose their sons, who become educated men and leave the land and sea for professions in the city. MacLeod's characters are deeply touching and memorable, and their simple lives are rich with loyalty and affection for their families and way of life. The sumptuous language, which immerses the reader in this stunning but unrelenting land, begs to be read aloud. A very special collection; recommended for all public libraries.DCathleen A. Towey, Port Washington P.L., NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
The author, an expatriate from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, writes about his homeland and its dying traditions, in tales that marry the elemental themes of Gaelic song (loneliness, sorrow, work, death) with a simple but deceptively modern narrative style. In the course of the sixteen stories (presented in order of publication, from 1968 to 1999), MacLeod's spare style grows more artful, but the ache of loss is constant as he captures the direct eloquence of the islanders––the coal miners, lobstermen, farmers, and lighthouse keepers who know they are the last of their kind.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Exceptional
One of the wise Elders in the story says. "Music is the lubricant of the poor all over the world. In all the different languages." Books like these and the people who write them provide the same comfort, and encouragement, and are a gift for readers to continue reading when there seems to be less writing of this caliber produced. The quote from the first paragraph is actually from Mr. Alistair MacLeod's work, "No Great Mischief". It was the first novel he wrote and was one of the finest reading experiences in the last several years for me. This collection of short stories was published in 2 separate books prior to his novel, and they distinguished him as one of the great talents writing today.

These stories may indeed be short when measured by the page; however any given piece that you care to choose is essentially faultless. The concept of, "second sight", is a subject that arises in some of these tales, and while Mr. MacLeod may not have that particular brand of vision, he like any great writer does see things differently than most people perceive them. And his sensitivity to detail extends to the other senses, and then he is able to place it upon pages for the rest of us to enjoy. He engages the reader on every level with the environment he creates, the sounds, and the very texture of the places he brings you to. This is the kind of work that you get so deeply involved with that you think about these people as real, as real as the names of the places they live, work, and die that appear on a map.

I don't believe there is one transcendent theme he is presenting with these stories, there is far too much involved in each to place a label on them all. The climate is as vital as many of his characters, and he imbues it with personality that is nearly sentient. Water provides the food for eating and employment, to illustrate tradition, and to show its demise. It cruelly takes life, when as ice it is deceptive and kills, then provides the stage for heroic deeds, and also crossings that bring forth new human life to its shores. And when it is neither liquid nor solid but an amalgam, it becomes a barrier that forces a person to watch the passage of two caskets containing her Parents as the funeral cortège proceeds on the unreachable far shore.

The Author will take every emotion and not just make you feel it, but at times hurt or suffer from the intensity that he brings with his writing. A Grandmother holds her 11-year-old grandchild, and says that of her 30 grandchildren she will never know him, as his Parents do not value visits home. And the husband, his Grandfather tells the child if the interval of time is the same until he again visits, there will be no meeting as the Patriarch will most certainly be dead. Cruel words to a child? Not when this man writes the exchange. What comes through is truth and the acceptance of it, pleasant or not.

New technology may keep all books available sometime in the near future but that does not mean availability creates demand. Very few Authors write work that is so special that readers are interested in the work today, and in 100 years from now. This man is just such an Author. He is the type of writer that causes people to read for the pleasure of his thoughts.

Unconditionally recommended!

One of our greatest living writers!
Alistair MacLeod is a Canadian national treasure. I hope they appreciate his talent as much as I. This collection reaches deep in to the psyche of natives of Cape Breton Island, descended from strong Scottish stock, roots deep within the land and the hard work necessary to maintain life and soul on the sometimes unforgiving islands.

The writing is lyrical with wonderful glimpses of Gaelic, which few of us know anything about. MacLeod's use of Gaelic, his talk of farm living and mankind's link with the sea, and more importantly, mankind's link with the past enable the reader to intimately feel the island culture, separate from the rest of Canada.

The tone is mournful, graceful, and paradoxically, both harsh and kind. Each story is self-contained. I usually had to stop between stories to allow the last one ot settle within me. Such power and understanding!

A Vanishing Way of Life
Alistair MacLeod writes of isolation and loneliness and loss. His characters are often solitary people, yet they are solitary people with a strong sense of both history and community...the community of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

MacLeod's characters are a dying breed, people we don't see many of these days: coal miners, fishermen, farmers, lighthouse keepers. They are a people held together by a strong Gaelic thread; they speak Gaelic, sing Gaelic songs and live lives upheld and reinforced by strong Gaelic traditions. They are a rural people and they very much prefer things to stay the way they have been.

But, as we all know, things never stay the way they have been. MacLeod's rural characters are the older ones. The younger ones have left the lonely farms of Cape Breton to work and study in the cities. The tourists are moving in, and, finding the Cape Breton landscape "unspoiled," and, therefore, very much to their liking, they are spoiling and defiling it, taking the first steps toward turning it into the very thing from which they wish to escape.

In "Island," MacLeod, writes mainly of the modern, city-wise, young people who come home to visit the dying world from which they wanted to escape. What they find is a world and a culture that will not die, that refuses to be obliterated. "The Closing Down of Summer" is a story that illustrates this persistence of the past perfectly.

MacLeod is at his best in this collection of stories. His prose is emotional but never maudlin, precise but never terse and it possesses a rhythm so Gaelic it can't fail to strike a chord of recognition in anyone who is in the least bit familiar with Cape Breton and its inhabitants. MacLeod is not a "rural" writer, yet his love for the rural is one thread that wends its way through all of these disparate tales.

To the uninitiated, MacLeod may seem a bit artificial in his dialogue. He's not. He's just being "Cape Breton" to the core. The dialogue of Nova Scotia is a dramatic one, full of artifice and beautifully cadenced. MacLeod captures all of this perfectly.

The stories in "Island" are simple, honest, earnest stories about simple, honest, earnest folk. They may, at times, sound a bit naive, but that's just the total honesty of them. And, it is the very thing that makes them so beautiful and unforgettable.

Some of these stories are older stories, so they may have a bit of an old-fashioned ring to them. Don't let that put you off. MacLeod isn't old-fashioned, he's timeless, and this book proves it. These stories, revolving around a vanishing people and a disappearing way of life, are marvelous, contemplative creations and it would certainly be a shame to miss them.