Island

Alistair MacLeod has been writing stories set mainly in his native land of Cape Breton, Novia Scotia, since the seventies. Both then, and again in the eighties, he published collections, but it wasn't until his novel No Great Mischief became a bestseller in recent years, that MacLeod has received the critical acclaim he so highly deserves. These stories, which go back to 1968, have a refreshing old-fashioned quality. His is a masculine world primarily, a world of miners and fishermen, loggers and lighthouse keepers, who live in a harsh but beautiful landscape hostile to much of human endeavour. In this sense, MacLeod could be seen as a male Alice Munro - the collection could as easily be titled 'lives of boys and men'. Which is not to say that anyone who loves beautifully crafted stories won't enjoy these.