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Canadian Authors - General fiction - |
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Island |
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Is land byAlistair MacLeod McClelland & Stewart 434 Pages, 2000 ISBN 0771055684 Reviewed by Zaheera Jiwaji Read our review of No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod Read our author profile Alistair MacLeod is a part of the Canadian literary history, distinguishing himself as a writer of short stories, which have also received much international attention. Upon the Canadian publication last year of his first novel NO GREAT MISCHIEF (see review), a complete collection of all his short stories were published in a single volume. These are the sixteen stories that make up this beautiful edition ISLAND. The stories are presented in chronological order, displaying MacLeod's development as a writer. They also serve to document a way of life that has disappeared in Cape Breton, MacLeod's childhood home. The characters are noble men, hardworking, strong and connected to the land and to the sea. A common thread that runs through the stories is the unadorned, artless strength of these ordinary people, who face life and death with a quiet acceptance. The narrators look back through time, recalling the cold winter mornings of a fisherman's life at sea, or the diseased black lungs of the men who worked the mines. MacLeod paints a picture evoking the new immigrant's life of sacrifice and broken dreams. Two of the stories have never before been published, of which Island, the title story, is one. It is also the only story with a female narrator, a woman living alone, and perhaps the most haunting of the stories, one that addresses departure through death and time. ISLAND holds forceful stories of raw emotion, sparing no truths. These stories are gems, deep and multi-faceted. Each one begs to be a full-length novel; readers sense that they are barely scratching the surface when it comes to Alistair MacLeod's genius. |
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