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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
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Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 1.7. Seller Inventory # 0771055684-2-1
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto 2000, Hardcover First Edition/First Printing. Stories by the great MacLeod, author of 'No Great Mischief'. Book Condition: New & unread, in a like dustjacket which is not price clipped - comes in a brodart protective & removable sleeve. Nice Copy!. Seller Inventory # ABE-1536949608014
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. First Edition. Alistair MacLeod has been hailed internationally as a master of the short story. Now MacLeods collected stories, including two never before published, are gathered together for the first time in Island. These sixteen superbly crafted stories, most of them firmly based in Cape Breton even if its people stray elsewhere, depict men and women living out their lives against the haunting landscape that surrounds them. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, MacLeod maps the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child, and invokes memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations, even in the midst of unremitting change. Eloquent, humane, powerful, and told in a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, the stories in this astonishing collection seize us from the outset and remain with us long after the final page. Seller Inventory # DADAX0771055684
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # Abebooks149504
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 1.7. Seller Inventory # 353-0771055684-new
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.7. Seller Inventory # Q-0771055684