Island, 1988), all the stories are about men. And, as though MacLeod's gifts as a writer fed off the vitality of his subject, the earlier stories are the most powerful in the later stories there's the sense, perhaps inevitable, that what was an urgent outpouring has become a more deliberate craft and a more conscious exploration of theme. No Great Mischief, his publishers have decided to issue all his short fiction in a matching volume.Īs Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986), as well as a new story,Ĭlearances, written for CBC's Festival of Fiction in 1999.Ĭollectively, the stories are an elegy to a way of life that is gone. (More elaborate notes are provided in lessons as part of my private tutoring business.In the wake of MacLeod's acclaimed 1999 novel The purpose of the concise notes of Dr Mark’s The Meaning in a Nutshell is to provide much needed help to students seeking to unlock the meaning of the texts with which they have to deal. MacLeod’s collection of short stories appears to express a desire for the ethnic Scottish community of Nova Scotia to survive and continue. The community is also threatened by those who leave their Canadian homeland for other countries.Įventually, if family homes are abandoned, these outposts of civilisation are lost, and therefore the meaning that these places acquired due to the experiences these people had there, would also be lost. Meanwhile, the difficulty of older generations of ethnic Scots to effectively pass on an appreciation of traditional Scottish folk culture and the Gaelic language is shown to threaten the continuity of this ethnic community. Consequently, the sharpest social divide in his stories appears to be between the rural and urban. While glorifying the hardiness of those who preserve family traditions and remain with their close-knit families and in traditional primary industries, he also appreciates how younger, better-educated family members can be tempted to leave home for what appears to be a better life in a big city.

His stories express tensions between continuity and change, and between tradition and rebellion, especially regarding his exploration of the generation gap.

While providing detailed descriptions of the harsh weather conditions and landscape, his stories feature accounts of ordinary life, the lives of families eking out a living, mostly in fishing, farming, mining and logging, or in related secondary industries. MacLeod is a chronicler in story form of the rugged landscape and people of Nova Scotia, a Canadian region settled predominantly by ethnic Scots. The Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod’s short story collection, Island (2000), presents a collection of his short works published between 19.

Island by Alistair MacLeod