This is a collection of wonderful stories told by a master story teller in the old tradition. Unlike most other collections of stories these live in your ear. Most others live on the page. And these are truly American stories, but unlike anything you'll find in popular anthologies of contemporary North American short stories, because they reach far back into our immigrant consciousness in an elastic, unpretentious way. I choose Alistair MacLeod over John Updike any day to describe what it means to me to be American.

On the surface 'The Lost Salt Gift of Blood' appears preoccupied with tragedy and death. However, read a little deeper and one finds it to be very life affirming. The themes of family, traditions, relationships, death, isolation and endurance echo throughout the short stories. The thematic parallels are skillfully woven into the fabric of the novel, highlighting that indeed, no one story can stand alone. It is worth reading!

Written with great care, precision and meaning. You must read between the lines to get the most out of the book. Although all the stories revolve around death, grief, and pain, the focus on the life of the characters, rites of passage, and relationships is truly inspiring. I really enjoyed this book.

This is a modern masterpiece, much neglected even in Canada. MacLeod's writing is full of the "blas" (gaelic for "taste") that is or was Cape Breton. These stories are contemporary and ancient. Though they deal with modern issues and people, you can't help feeling these stories are very old. They reveal things unearthly and magical without ever taking their feet off the ground or closing their eyes. And there is a sad sense of loss that everyone close to things old and beautiful must feel in our modern culture.

The raw emotional power I encountered within these stories sprang the off page like a fist, fracturing my complacency over and over. Nothing but Hemingway compares to Macleod's writing style.Uncomfortable truths lie here, expressed with such skill and economy that they elude memory, leaving the uneasy feeling that one has looked too deeply into a troubled soul and seen more than one should; it's hard to believe that the events described didn't happen, if not to the author, at least someone known to him.I believe there is no other writer in the English language with this mastery of short fiction.

Fans of Alistair MacLeod, please understand -- I respect his writing abilities, but this book disappointed me. Perhaps it's too much in the vein of what little I've read of Hemingway and London -- but it just didn't hold me like I anticipated...and yes, I read it all the way through.

There were some stories I liked more than others -- but for the most part, I found them to be uninvolving. His descriptive talents are immense, and his feeling for his subjects and their setting -- Canada's beautiful but harsh Cape Breton Island, for the most part -- is obviously deep and heartfelt. Perhaps his characters and his storylines are just a little too rough-hewn for me, I can't really put my finger on it.

I'm glad I read this book -- I had heard a lot about MacLeod's work in the last year or so -- and I won't go so far as to recommend that others NOT read him. As I said, his talents are genuine and obvious, and others might enjoy these stories more than I did. By all means, if you enjoy reading the work of a craftsman, don't ignore this man's writing.

I've read collections of short stories in the past year that I enjoyed more -- by Russell Banks, John Biguenet, Adria Bernardi, and (my favorite) William Trevor.

I found the stories in Alistair MacLeod's Island to be beautifully moving--some incredibly powerful, others merely just very good. These are contemplative stories and because they all deal with similar underlying topics (but altogether different stories)--the return to the rural, the countryside's slow adaptation to change, youth contrasted with age--it makes sense to read these stories slowly, over several weeks. I believe reading these quickly may cause them to blend together, something you don't want to do because each story has its unique original beauty. MacLeod writes very carefully and his prose is very, I don't know, almost heavy, very powerful. You have to be in a contemplative mood, I believe, to appreciate these stories. This is not a collection for that cross country plane ride, or your week at the beach. Rather, these are stories to be savored slowly, in peace and quiet. Well done.

I needed to read these stories after finding MacLeod's No Great Mischief. His scene is Cape Breton. His times are those of his unfolding generations of Scots. His style is idiosycratic. He can make you believe that he was there, whenever the time, whoever the family, whatever the cameo experience.

MacLeod uses the voices of generations of Canadians who always remember that they are Scots. They are Scottish even if they have never seen their country or never even know just where their forebears belonged.

The stories are simple. In the Golden Gift of Grey, eighteen year old Jesse pockets his first pool balls and his first winning dollars. Macleod makes scenes like this live through the smells of the bar, its men's washroom and the gyrations of the dancer. The edge of Jesse's tension is seen through the limp, damp dollar notes of his winnings, crammed in a ball in his pockets. The twist to end the story is satisfying, if predictable.

Some of the stories are tough and tell of a harsh life. Again MacLeod evokes his scenes through heat and cold, rain and hail and snow and through light and dark. His men can be mean and cautious, but also complicated and kind, especially the many grandfathers. In To Everything There is a Season, Macleod is able to build a tension in a little story about a son's homecoming at Christmas that would do justice to a suspense story.

Macleod is a craftsman writer. He shows his characters through their scenes rather than through descriptive narrative about personality. These are very satisfying stories and I have to say that I hunger for more of the tales of Cape Breton from this writer.

If anyone should doubt the book critics' relevance in guiding readers' choices, look no further than Alistair MacLeod's "No Great Mischief (NGM)". If not for its constant appearance on their notable reads list, the publication of NGM would likely have gone unnoticed because it's a low key unshowy kind of book that's unlikely to attract attention. But thanks to them, I have discovered a gem about one's family, clan, and roots. Quiet, reflective, and lovingly narrated by a modern day MacDonald in Ontario, the story traces the history of the MacDonalds back to the 17th Century when its first immigrant parent arrived from Scotland to settle in Canada, desperate and poor. The author takes certain liberties with chronology - eg, toggling between scenes of the narrator as a successful dentist and a coal miner working alongside his older brothers can be a challenge - but it's consistent with the story's dreamlike quality. Recurring images or memories unfold like a chorus that locks you into the rhythmn of the song. There are many scenes that are simply unforgettable and will remain firmly etched in your mind, like that of the dead immigrant's wife being offloaded into the sea, the family dog swimming against the tide into the arms of its owner, the tragic ice accident that claimed his parents' lives, his brothers melting ice from buckets to make their morning coffee, the horrific decapitation of a MacDonald in the mines, etc. These floating images, coupled with the impression that the MacDonalds have multiplied like rabbits and all but conquered Ontario, only serves to reinforce the novel's theme of blood and kinship. If only MacLeod had been less presumptuous about his reader's knowledge of Canadian Confederation history and its Scottish anticedent, the references to how key characters fought for opposite sides at different points would have made more sense. Despite these slight misgivings, I enjoyed NGM tremendously. MacLeod's prose has a beautifully understated and intimate cadence to it that suggests an assuredness absent from much of what passes today as good contemporary writing. NGM won't change your life but it'll add to it. Highly recommended.

Alistair MacLeod is not a writer, he's a craftsman. Each word in this incredibly rich story is carefully rendered. Each sentence grows on the one just read, and each paragraph is a story all its own. MacLeod is a master of fiction. He has few peers.

The story glides along, oozing with history and pain and sentiment. The MacDonald clan, through the eyes of Alexander MacDonald, comes clearly to life. We follow the clan for more than 200 years after they leave Scotland. To this family, history is all-important, and family is everything. The red- and black-haired and dark-eyed MacDonalds survive heartbreak and loss in the "land of the trees" -- Cape Breton -- and dig out a new life on the Maritime shores. Young Alexander and his twin sister live with their grandparents, near their other grandfather, and are eternally schooled in their family's past. I felt honoured to share in their history, to soak in their very lives. From the coast of Scotland to the hard-rock mines of northern Ontario to the bleary streets of today's Toronto, MacLeod takes us on a road seldom taken in modern fiction. Buy this book at any price.

Cape Breton in Nova Scotia comes alive in this tale about a Canadian family of Scottish descent, from the red-haired ancester named Calum Ruadh. The narrator of the story is, Alexander, now a successful orthodontic surgeon living in a suburb of Toronto. He is visiting his much older, sick, and penniless alcoholic brother in the inner city. As he does so, he journeys back in time to reminisce about his childhood and about the ancestors. He remembers the good times and the hardships, but it is death that alters the course of all their lives and charts their future. Death strikes strikes immigrant ancestors during the original ocean crossing in 1779. It again strikes Alexander's parents as they across thin ice one evening, and much later Alexander's namesake cousin in a mining accident. Ironically, death has benefited others: first from the family who sought a better life in Canada, and it also provided opportunities for a better life for Alexander and his sister. He must come to terms with this too. The story is also about the passage of time, about trying to hold onto one's heritage and sense of dignity, yet live in the outside world. He remembers the stories of old ancesters fighting a losing battle in 1692. Now in twentieth century Canada, the isolated idyll of Cape Breton, a self-sufficient fishing community, eventually gives way to the pressures of the outside world. Many are forced to go elsewhere for work, such as the mines. There, they meet people from other places, most notably French Canadians, who are another special community with whom they usually clash but sometimes form alliances. This is a lyrical and faithfully told story that will stay in your heart for a long time.

I found this book very hard to get into. Our grade 12 english teacher picked it for a comprehensive novel study.I think that things just moved way too slow for my liking. It had a good story line but because of the nature it was writen in I would not recomend it to anyone.

A very interesting and unusual novel, and MacLennan's first (--which seems astounding, given its stylistic sophistication). The plot is intricate and suspenseful, and three of the four main characters are portrayed as fully conscious, focused beings, who are either aware of their own motives and values, or keenly interested in identifying them; the fourth character, Geoffrey Wain, exhibits a distinctly opposite mentality, and proves--therefore--to be a villainous threat to each of the others. Nautical engineer Penny Wain, Geoffrey's daughter, is a true rarity in modern literature: an intelligent, introspective, rational heroine. MacLennan's descriptive passages are typically colorful and dramatic, and often warrant immediate (and subsequent) re-reading (even though some do seem a bit drawn-out, on first reading). The much-heralded explosion is not, for my money, quite as interesting or dramatic as other parts of the plot, so the reader shouldn't "wait for" that: the first three-quarters of the book is the main course; and the last quarter, a light dessert. Overall, MacLennan has given us a banquet to savor.

Another entry from the Canadian New Library Series, another homerun for Canadian literature. That must necessarily be the ruling on this immensely engaging 1941 freshman effort from Hugh MacLennan, for "Barometer Rising" is a taut, intensely character driven novel from one of Canada's great essayists. MacLennan went on to write several other novels, more essays, and even some travelogues, history, and poetry. He is nothing if not versatile. If only more people knew about the wealth of literary gems from the Great White North awaiting their pleasure in the libraries and bookstores. For those interested in exploring the brilliance of Canadian literature, Hugh MacLennan is a great place to start. Hugh MacLennan died in 1990.

"Barometer Rising" takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia during 1917. The war in Europe continues to grind away, chewing up young men from around the world in its trenches and no man's lands. Nearly every passing day sees troopships exiting Halifax harbor bound for the bloodbath, and nearly every day they pass supply and munitions ships entering the port on their way to and from Europe. The city is full of foreign sailors and soldiers from every point of the compass. The war is a big deal, and since Canada serves as Britain's whipping boy, Halifax provides a safe harbor beyond the reach of German U-boats. But disaster lurks in the waters off Halifax: a munitions ship loaded with 500,000 pounds of trinitrotoluol sails into the harbor and collides with another ship. The resulting explosion is nearly nuclear in its destructiveness. Thousands die as major sections of the city explode and burn. The author shrewdly sets up his novel in countdown form, beginning on the Sunday before the explosion and ending the tale the following Monday, a few days after the disaster. MacLennan makes this Nova Scotian city the major character in his book, showing the reader the wartime changes while allowing us to take an occasional glimpse behind the curtain to see the way the city was before the war.

A cast of characters parades through the streets of Halifax for our perusal. The Wain family is central to the story. There is Penelope "Penny" Wain, a brilliant woman who designs boats for the war effort while withstanding the barbs from jealous male co-workers. Her father, Colonel Wain, is an old pro-English patriarch who cannot stand the fact that he remains in Halifax while the war rages in Europe. He wishes to return to battle and seek some glory, but his first tour of duty ended in disaster. For this disgrace, Wain blames his nephew Neil Macrae. Now Neil roams the streets of Halifax, seeking redemption for a tragedy on the fields of Europe. The reemergence of Neil places Major Angus Murray in a moral quandary; he realizes the return of Wain's nephew will upset his plans for the future. The reader must decide for themselves if the choices the characters make are the correct ones.

An afterword (the Canadians are polite; they do not put spoilers at the beginning of the book as we do in the United States) written by Alistair MacLeod provides some personal anecdotes about the explosion, followed by a critique of the story. To MacLeod, the story deftly reveals the big town/small town differences between some of the characters, between those born and raised in Halifax versus those who hail from Cape Breton. For me, the most interesting theme of the book was MacLennan's political views about Canada and its relationship to the United States and England. To the author, Canada will emerge from the war as the keystone of the world, a bridge between barbaric Europe lost in its destructive wars and the emerging power of the United States. He deplores the second-class status of Canada, its relegation as second fiddle to the United Kingdom. Several times throughout the story, the characters step back from their activities and wax philosophic about the position of Canada and Nova Scotia in relation to the rest of the world. To call MacLennan a Canadian nationalist would not be too extreme of a statement.

I did not know what to expect from this book when I opened its covers. I do like Canadian literature, so that is never a problem. "Barometer Rising" is only 219 pages long, so it is necessary that the author grabs you fast and makes you care about his creation. He succeeds in spades because he brings his characters to life through carefully crafted scenes of introspection, clinical descriptions of the city, and the dramatic countdown to the explosion. The reader cares about what happens to these people, and hopes that the author will bring everything to a tidy resolution in the end. For a quick read that is hugely entertaining and leaves you hungry for more, seek out this book.