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Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in “the land of trees,” where his descendents became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, exile, and of the blood ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came.
Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award: “The genius of his stories is to render his fictional world as timeless.”—Colm Tóibín 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.
The famous verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes are accompanied by exquisite illustrations, each rendered in the style of a different world culture...An ecumenical, artistic, and cultural experience, rich in beauty and expansive in its appreciation of ethnic variety." - School Library Journal, starred review. "Readers will be awed by the breadth and depth of the artwork...[and] the seriousness and thought the Dillons have put into the book.... [A] book that can be examined and thought about by generations of young readers." - Booklist, starred review
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.
This book is an incredible Australian story of an ordinary man who has lived an extraordinary life, who has overcome seemly insurmountable obstacles to succeed in living his dreams and accomplishing his ambitions. Fighting droughts, a legal system after he had used a firearm in self defense, the injustice of the family law court, the rights of a father and son whilst enduring betrayals, both personal and business, are just some of the crushing battles fought in his life. These battles rendered him penniless in his later part of life. With his usual never-give up attitude he remarkably created a property portfolio in the millions in just 48 months, created from mentors, business minds of millionaires from the bush and the city.
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.
Including personal interviews, background information, and criticism, this collection of essays examines renowned Canadian author Alistair MacLeod's life and the writing of his novel No Great Mischief. Various literary critics explore themes present in his work such as memory versus myth and the blending of history. One of the chief contemporary fiction writers, MacLeod has won such honors as the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Raddall Award for Fiction, and the Trillium Award for Fiction.
From the internationally celebrated author of No Great Mischief comes a moving short story of three generations of men from a single family whose lives are forever altered by the long shadow of war. In the early morning hours of November 11, David MacDonald, a veteran of the Second World War, stands outside his Cape Breton home, preparing to attend what will likely be his last Remembrance Day parade. As he waits for the arrival of his son and grandson, he remembers his decision to go to war in desperation to support his young family. He remembers the horrors of life at the frontlines in Ortona, Italy, and then what happened in Holland when the Canadians arrived as liberators. He remembers how the war devastated his own family, but gave him other reasons to live. As the story unfolds, other generations enter the scene. What emerges is an elegant, life-affirming meditation on the bond between fathers and sons, "how the present always comes out of the past," and how even in the midst of tragedy and misfortune there exists the possibility for salvation. His first new short story in over a decade, Remembrance is a powerful reminder of why Alistair MacLeod is one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.
In Alistair MacLeod: A Literary Companion, Canadian literary scholar Corey Evan Thompson seeks to offer general readers and advanced students of Canadian literature an introductory overview of the life and writings of the Canadian novelist and short story author Alistair MacLeod. While MacLeod's profile was not as prolific as other Canadian authors, such as Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro, his writings have left an indelible impression on readers and critics alike. This book offers an encyclopedic account of all of MacLeod's writings (including publication history and plot synopsis) and vitally important aspects of his life and work.
'Here is my prize read for people who are interested in books, writers, Canada, life, and all that kind of thing.'' - Alice Munro, from the introduction ''I'll kill him!'' said Mavis Gallant. Pierre Trudeau almost did, leading him (''Run!'') into a whizzing stream of traffic that almost crushed both of them. Alistair MacLeod accused him of a ''home invasion'' to grab the manuscript of "No Great Mischief." And Paul Martin denounced him to a laughing Ottawa crowd, saying, ''If Shakespeare had had Doug Gibson as an editor, there would be no Shakespeare!'' On the other hand, Alice Munro credits him with keeping her writing short stories when the world demanded novels. Robertson Davies, with a nod to Dickens, gratefully called him ''My Partner Frequent.'' W.O. Mitchell summoned up a loving joke about him, on his deathbed. "Stories About Storytellers" shares these tales and many more, as readers follow Doug Gibson through 40 years of editing and publishing some of Canada's sharpest minds and greatest storytellers. Gibson is a terrific storyteller himself, and through his recollections we get an inside view of Canadian politics and publishing that rarely gets told. From Jack Hodgins' Vancouver Island to Harold Horwood's Labrador, from Alice Munro's Ontario to James Houston's Arctic, Doug Gibson takes us on an unforgettable literary tour of Canada, going behind the scenes and between the covers, and opening up his own story vault for all to read and enjoy.