Rating: 
Summary: Remarkable.
Review: Alistair MacLeod leads us to a community that is both foreign (to those far from Atlantic coast Canada) and deeply familiar. You can't help but be moved. It's literary excellence that you don't notice until the story is complete. Perhaps his greatest feat: despite the rawness of emotion shown here, you still want to visit this haunting corner of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: TALENTED, DEFINITELY -- BUT NOT MY CUP OF TEA...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: TALENTED, DEFINITELY -- BUT NOT MY CUP OF TEA...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Stories
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Memory and Myth
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Bittersweet Look Back Home
Review: I read this book over two years ago and parts of it continue to haunt me. It tells of life in Cape Breton in the province, I believe, of Nova Scotia. It is written by a man who grew up there. This is a part of the nearby world that I have always wanted to visit. I may yet get to do that but I'm not sure whether MacLeod's book has made me more anxious or less anxious to do so. His Breton is a place where life is not at all like the pretty postcard that many of us imagine. In his collection of short stories and sketches, we come away with an appreciation of the hard times and sturdy people but we don't necessarily want them moving next door. There are a number of stories and scenes that really bring people to life in a very down to earth manner. The story of the loneliness of the girl in the title story was overwelming. I recall a number of references to sex that were made throughout the book in a sort of agrarian manner; taking the cow to be "serviced" by the neighbor's bull was almost as emotional as some of the human intercourses. Things had their purpose and occassionally there was a purpose for fun but much of the imagry I took away from this book was that of a very stoic people. I gave it a rating of "5" because I rounded up this time from a 4.5. This book definitely will have an impact on its' reader. Not a joyful or inspiring impact but an impact nonetheless,
Rating:
Summary: A Bittersweet Look Back Home
Review: I read this book over two years ago and parts of it continue to haunt me. It tells of life in Cape Breton in the province, I believe, of Nova Scotia. It is written by a man who grew up there. This is a part of the nearby world that I have always wanted to visit. I may yet get to do that but I'm not sure whether MacLeod's book has made me more anxious or less anxious to do so. His Breton is a place where life is not at all like the pretty postcard that many of us imagine. In his collection of short stories and sketches, we come away with an appreciation of the hard times and sturdy people but we don't necessarily want them moving next door. There are a number of stories and scenes that really bring people to life in a very down to earth manner. The story of the loneliness of the girl in the title story was overwelming. I recall a number of references to sex that were made throughout the book in a sort of agrarian manner; taking the cow to be "serviced" by the neighbor's bull was almost as emotional as some of the human intercourses. Things had their purpose and occassionally there was a purpose for fun but much of the imagry I took away from this book was that of a very stoic people. I gave it a rating of "5" because I rounded up this time from a 4.5. This book definitely will have an impact on its' reader. Not a joyful or inspiring impact but an impact nonetheless,
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: I went looking for a book to read; one that was smart, but not pretentious in its prose. One that would hold my interest, but that I wouldn't spend the rest of the summer reading. On a wim, I grabbed this book. And found exactly what I was looking for.
Alistair MacLeod writes with astounding sight and insight. It's difficult to describe a writer this good. He writes simply, but beautifully. He tells us just what we need to know, but often through new ways of looking at things. You're kind of riding along for a while, and then one simple sentence will knock you for a loop because it rings so true. In The Return, a story of a man who has married, moved to Vancouver and not been back to Cape Breton to visit his mother, father and brothers in nearly a decade, MacLeod perfectly shows us the anger, hurt and pain experienced by all. Even the son who is narrating the story understands the underlying tension in the house. "It is morning now and I awake to the argument of the English sparrows outside my window and the fingers of the sun upon my floor." A sentence perfectly put in the story at a time when the tension is felt, but not quite understood to what level it may rise. Everything about Cape Breton is tension in this story, even the birds.
Quite often in this book, the sentences that nail you are because of the build up. It reminds me of the movie the Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas (not in scenario or character or theme, but in prose), where it builds, and you aren't quite sure where it is all going, but you are intrigued, and then Christina Ricci says, "Do you remember how you always tell us that a writer has to make choices? It's just that you haven't made any choices." And even though she is discussing his novel, you know it means so much more than that.
That is how Alistair MacLeod writes. His sentences are simple, but they mean oh so much more than that.
Rating: 
Summary: A Magnificent Work
Review: MacLeod's stories evoke a sense of place better than most living writers. He does not rend his characters with relentless descriptions of their appearance (in fact, in some of the stories, the characters have no names and we are given little or no hint of what they look like); rather, they seem to emerge from the very landscape the author describes. They are coal miners, fishermen, lighthouse keepers and their wives and children, living in a part of the world that is alternately gorgeous and ferocious. MacLeod recognizes that this is all we need to know of them to understand their lives. What is even more impressive than MacLeod's elegant, understated style is the fact that the stories in Island were published over the course of 30 years, from the late '60s to 1999. Yet the author's voice and the quality of his craftsmanship are so masterful, the span of time between the stories is virtually indiscernible. This is what makes literature classic.
Rating:
Summary: A Vanishing Way of Life
Review: One of the great lies existing within Canada is that the corner of the world known as "Cape Breton" is a mystical, haunting, culturally rich area. This is a complete falsehood. I lived in CB for over 25 years. It is an impoverished, dirty, run-down hellish little island with extremely high unemployment and alcoholism. The "culture" existing, consists of bastardizing the English language and drunken "fiddlers" hopping around, believing that they are prodigies. This book, while well written, further perpetuates the myths about this island. That is unfortunate.
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