No Great Mischief

by Alistair MacLeod

Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever linked to their clan. There is the legendary patriarch who left the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and resettled in “the land of trees,” where his descendents became a separate Nova Scotia clan. There is the team of brothers and cousins, expert miners in demand around the world for their dangerous skills. And there is Alexander and his twin sister, who have left Cape Breton and prospered, yet are haunted by the past. Elegiac, hypnotic, by turns joyful and sad, No Great Mischief is a spellbinding story of family, loyalty, exile, and of the blood ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Canadian Literature, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 1999

About the author

When MacLeod was ten his family moved to a farm in Dunvegan, Inverness County on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. After completing high school, MacLeod attended teacher's college in Truro and then taught school. He studied at St. Francis Xavier University between 1957 and 1960 and graduated with a BA and B.Ed. He then went on to receive his MA in 1961 from the University of New Brunswick and his PhD in 1968 from the University of Notre Dame. A specialist in British literature of the nineteenth century, MacLeod taught English for three years at Indiana University before accepting a post in 1969 at the University of Windsor as professor of English and creative writing. During the summer, his family resided in Cape Breton, where he spent part of his time "writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island."
-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

All this obsession with the family past and a wish to get down to the roots...
No Great Mischief seems to be too ordinary to win so many prestigious literary awards and though I liked the novel I wasn't impressed greatly.

In the landscape around me, those who harvest the bounty of the earth are stilled for the day. Yet they are there in the near-darkness with their own hopes and dreams and disappointments.

At first there are great expectations then there are just hopes and then one keeps hoping against hope...

[Maciek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just learned that Alistair MacLeod died yesterday. This shouldn't be such a shock - he was 77, and suffered a major stroke in January which forced him to remain in a hospital in Windsor, Ontario - a city where he lived and taught, and ultimately passed away. I was reading materials on him work just a few weeks ago and he was still with us, and now he's not. Despite being an acclaimed author in his native Canada and abroad, Mr. MacLeod remained a very private person - I had no idea about his condition, and the abrupt news of his death were unexpected and touched me.

No Great Mischief is Alistair MacLeod's only novel - before it he was mostly known for his short stories, which were ultimately collected in Island: The Complete Stories. Alistair MacLeod was born in North Battleford, in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, but his fiction is set in the Canadian maritimes - mostly in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, where he came to live at the age of 10. Although he later moved to Windsor and taught at the local university for over four decades, every year he returned to Cape Breton for the summer. The long history of the island, its unique culture and unrelenting weather provided plenty of inspiration for these fictions, which ultimately culminated in this book - Macleod was 64 when it was first published, and it has since won him a number of awards and honors. In 2009 was voted to be Atlantic Canada's greatest book of all time.

No Great Mischief begins in the fall, my favorite season, with the narration of Alexander MacDonald, a successful orthodontist who journeys across southwestern Ontario on Highway 401, from his home in Windsor towards the city of Toronto, where he is to see Calum, his older brother. It is September, the golden month, and as Alexander notes in the splendid autumn sunshine the bounty of the land is almost overwhelming, as if it is the manifestation of a poem by Keats - and the drive to Toronto becomes one towards the past, as the emotional ties between brothers give way towards a narrative mirroring almost whole of Canadian history, starting from the expulsion of Calum MacDonald and his family from the Scottish Highlands in 1779 and their journey and subsequent arrival in Cape Breton, the land of trees, where they would form the clann Chalum Ruaidh - a closely knit community with its own identity and history. The title comes from general James Wolfe's assertion of the fierce Scottish Highlanders, whom he summoned to fight in the Battle of Plains of Abraham: "hey are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall."

This is - and most likely will remain - Alistair MacLeod's only novel. He was a perfectionist, and one who never rewrote his work - he wrote a sentence of a story, waited for the muses, and wrote another sentence. He also wrote the final sentence halfway through, as a light to guide him throughout it. No Great Mischief in both form and theme is reminiscent of the oral tradition of storytelling, when an elder would sit down in front of his audience and begin to tell his story; there aren't any wasted words here, and in its short length (under 300 pages) the novel manages to describe history of generations of people and a country. It isn't a perfect book - there are many moments where MacLeod veers too close to bathos, such as by having his characters randomly break into songs in Gaelic one too many times - and the symbolism is sometimes too obvious - there's one scene where a character walks into a room with a t-shirt saying living in the past is not living up to our potential - but it is a book full of genuine charm and purely human heart, a product of great effort and time, and one that I will read again. This is why, in honor of the author, I am giving it the extra fifth star - with sadness, as we will not read a story by him again. Rest in Peace, Mr. MacLeod.

'All of us are better when we're loved'

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

April 21, 2014: Rest in peace, Alistair MacLeod. Died April 20, 2014.
His extraordinary style will never be matched.

Another outstanding piece of storytelling from this great Canadian writer. He uses repetition of images and phrases throughout the book as a very effective tool. It gives the story both a rhythm and an anchor, continually bringing you back to reminders of what binds the clan and their shared history.

This is the story of the Scottish clan of Calum the Red, who came to Nova Scotia over 200 years ago. They come from that rich ancient oral tradition where the family stories are repeated endlessly through the centuries, and added to as events progress. They're all so hopelessly inbred within the clan that they can barely keep track of who's who. There are THREE Alexander MacDonalds in the story! All cousins who basically look the same, redheaded but dark eyed. Even the dogs are inbred, descended from the brown dog Calum the Red brought from Scotland. Given the confusing family ties, I thought the author did an amazing job of setting them apart so I could keep track of all the people.

The main story takes place in modern times, with the narrator telling his story of being raised by his grandparents after his parents died when he was three years old. The behaviors and connections of the clan are so deeply rooted in the ancestral experiences that the oft-repeated histories and songs sometimes appear more real and important than current events.

[Miles Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess this is not my sort of book. It is the tale of Scots in Cape Breton and in particular a branch of the MacDonalds, and makes much of how they never forgot their roots, always stick together, and still speak Gaelic. It won various prizes and is considered the best Atlantic Canadian novel. But how it got so esteemed I have no idea. I found it tiresome and longwinded. There is really not much of a plot except a bunch of disjointed anecdotes. The characters are little more than mouthpieces for their ethnic background - continually making historical references (to Culloden and Wolfe) at any moment and continually reciting the same lines. It is difficult to know who is speaking or where they are speaking since they all say the same things all the time. And nothing much happens but even what does happen makes little or no impact since none of the characters seem to have any depth. One character called Alexander MacDonald gets replaced by another character called Alexander MacDonald for no particular reason.

The traveling to Scotland falls particularly flat as everyone they meet is out of a North American fantasy of the Scottish Highlands. Immediately recognizing the MacDonalds by their red hair and black eyes and talking of the '45 and Prince Charlie as if it all happened yesterday.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy Alistair MacLeod’s prose, some of the best I’ve read. While the characters are not very dynamic in No Great Mischief and the life of miners and this clan from Cape Breton are not the most interesting of subjects, if nothing else this book should be savored for the beautiful writing, the nostalgia it evokes and its strong sense of place. I enjoyed Islands, MacLeod’s book of short stories, a little more because it was more colorful but No Great Mischief is very thought provoking when it comes to old clans dispersing across North America in search of jobs which are not in supply in Cape Breton.

4 stars. One summer, a number of years ago, I drove my family around Cape Breton in our RV. One of my fondest road trips. There is a truthfulness to MacLeod’s writing about this place. The imagery he evokes of a beautiful and maritime Cape Breton matched my observations made while driving, camping and hiking there. It’s a region more resistant to modernization than perhaps any place in Canada — some of the signs are still in Gaelic. But the roads might be the worst I’ve ever seen in a 1st world country.

[Paul Burry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"My sister was silent for a moment.

'Calum once told me,' I said, 'that when they went back to the country, they went one day to cut a timber for the skidway they were making for their boat. They went into a tightly packed grove of spruce down by the shore. In the middle of the grove, they saw what they thought was the perfect tree. It was tall and straight and over thirty feet high. They notched it as they had been taught and then they sawed it with a bucksaw. When they had sawed it completely through, nothing happened. The tree's upper branches were so densely intertwined with those around it that it just remained standing. There was no way it could be removed or fall unless the whole grove was cut down. It remained like that for years. Perhaps it is still there. When the wind blew, the whole grove would move and sigh. Becuase all of the trees were evergreen they never lost their foliage, and the supporting trees extended their branches every year. If you walked by the grove, Calum said, you would never realize that in its midst there was a tall straight tree that was severed at its stump.'"

[J.C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was puzzled by this novel. Was it a novel at all? It is presented as an account of the 21st Century protagonist’s life within the “Clann Chaluim Ruaidh”, (Red Calum’s clan). He is Alexander MacDonald, ‘Alasdair’ in Gaelic, like the author’s Christian name. There are at least two more of this name who crop up in the tale, indicative of the patterns and continuance of family that constitute its core.
In this fictionalised account, in 1779, the family of Calum Ruadh left Moidart in the Scottish Highlands, to seek a new life in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, in Canada. These were the times of The Scottish Clearances, when people were often forced from their homes by their lairds (overlords) or else made their own ‘choice’ through hardship caused by the mass advent of sheep to the grazing lands. Sometimes their house was burnt over their heads. The journey across the North Atlantic on emigrant ships was dangerous in the extreme, and many died in the overcrowded and insanitary conditions, or in shipwreck. In this book, the clan of Calum Ruadh is still partly Gaelic speaking, and cling to their origins while fully embracing their identity as Canadians. There is no dichotomy. They are exiles who now choose not to return. They have dual identity.
The degree of repetition of incidents in their family history indicates that they have only crumbs of their ancestors’ lives; but these suffice. The paucity of detail, beyond the main events of the stories, might explain the frequent repetition and reliance throughout the novel on a few Gaelic phrases and songs. These are all translated into English. In real life there is a strong Gaelic community in Nova Scotia, and exchange visits take place between the Gaelic community there and the island where I live, focusing on traditional and modernised song, music and dance.
So what of the novel? The recurrence of the same names and phrases so often, and always in italics, began to irritate me, as did the frequent references to the striking red, or black, hair that ran in different members of the clan, and made them instantly recognisable to each other. In the book they are even instantly recognisable when they visit Scotland, which I felt was overdone. But I felt guilty at feeling even mild irritation when such a tragic time in my country’s history was being evoked, and its legacy explored. What rang true in the opening chapter for me was the meeting of two of the brothers, the narrator, Alexander, a successful orthodontist, and his brother Calum, who is the worse for years of alcohol consumption, a common feature of life in the west coast and the islands here. When the early lives of these brothers and their siblings is described, as well as the history of their family, the writing is poetic. There is a sense of dreaminess within a material context that is very expressive of the Celtic nature. Contrast is provided between the grandfathers, one of whom is generous and bawdy, the other meticulous and a researcher of history, trying to establish fact from loved legend. The title of the book comes from a letter from General Wolfe, who, in defending his use of Highlanders at The Plains of Abraham wrote:

“They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall.”

The Highland Canadians must also accustom themselves to a “rough country”. At first they worked the sea; I could relate to an incident where by their singing and companionship they encouraged a whale to come to them, and it died in the shallows of the rocks by the shore. There is a great emphasis on their relationship with animals, especially the ‘Calum Ruadh' dogs. The action alters when the brothers become miners, and in this section of the book different immigrant cultures are juxtaposed. Throughout, there are what I considered fairly graphic references that, in my opinion, make this more of a male book. This aspect of the book was redeemed for me by the last chapter, which was, I thought, finely written and moving in terms of life, ancestry and continuation; memory is a fragile, beautiful, cherished thing, of measureless value.
It was already clear from the dedication, and from the use of Gaelic, that the author himself is descended from Highland emigrants, and that this book is indeed reflective of his own family history. Then I came to the acknowledgements. I quote from the author,

“I would like to acknowledge the spiritual assistance that came my way during the completion of this novel.”

That’s it decided, then. It’s not so much a novel as a testament, and, in this writing from the new lands, is heard still the poetic voice of the Celt.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel so very ho-hum over this one that I have very little to say.

[Karen·]

We are all better when we're loved.

1940s Cape Breton is a place untouched by modern ideas of individualism. Here identity is not forged by choices made, but by birth into a history, birth into a clan, birth into your place in that lineage that stretches back to Calum Ruadh who came from Moidart to the New World in 1779 when he was a man of 55, who lived another 55 years in the land of trees, giving his life a strange sort of balance. Who are your parents, who are your grandparents, those are the questions to establish who you are. Ah, clann Chalum Ruadh. That is who you are.

Our narrator is Alexander MacDonald, but he hardly knows his own name until poked by a cousin when he fails to respond to it called from the roll at school. He is gille beag ruadh, the little red-haired boy. Years have passed since that time; he drives from south west Ontario to visit his eldest brother Calum in Toronto, stranded there in the back lanes between Spadina Avenue and Yonge Street, a man who has nothing, a man who has everything. In majestic, sweeping rhythms, 'ille beag ruadh interweaves the history of his family and of the MacDonalds, those same MacDonalds betrayed by the Campbells at Glencoe, those highland men who fought alongside General Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, of whom the General said "They are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and no great mischief if they fall." Past and present drift and mingle, indistinguishable. Is it nought but fine irony when a young woman in a black T-shirt walks towards him: the T-shirt carrying the slogan "Living in the past is not living up to our potential."?

The men of the clan work the land and the sea, and when that no longer serves, Alexander's brothers set off to work deep under the surface in the uranium mines of Elliot Lake. When a cousin, also Alexander MacDonald, is killed in an accident, this Alexander MacDonald steps in to fill his place. He, in turn, is replaced by another cousin, another Alexander MacDonald, come from California to escape the draft. They are elements in a complex network, one that demands fierce loyalty and equally fierce adherence to a code of honour among blood. When that code is broken, Calum, the eldest, the leader, must take the rap.

Equally as remarkable as the relations between brothers and cousins is the relationship between man and beast; even the dog who cares too much and tries too hard, even the horse who always keeps her side of the bargain, aye, even they show that fierce loyalty.

Only the sister is a weakness in the construct of this saga, as she appears too much as a mere spokesperson, a history lesson, a lecture for our edification, but not our delight. And the ending slips just a touch into melodrama and sentiment, twin spectres at the feast, so successfully shut out from all that had gone before, although the chance for them to wheedle their way in was often there. But somehow a book has to end, and why not with a death foreseen, and a return home across a storm swept causeway. Crossing to the other side, indeed.

Soundtrack:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_Gdy...

[Haniyeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

غم های کوچک از خانواده‌ای اسکاتلندی صحبت میکنه که در گذشته مجبور به مهاجرت میشن و سرپرست خانواده "خالوم روئی" سختی های زیادی میکشه تا بتونه خانواده‌اش رو دوباره سرپا کنه. بچه‌هاش و فرزندان اونها همه خاندان بزرگی رو به وجود میارن که برای هم بسیار ارزشمند هستن. خالوم روئی ها برای همخون خودشون ارزش زیادی قائلن، همینطور برای اسکاتلند و وفاداری به آیین و سنت های قدیمیشون.
داستان از زبان یکی از نوادگان به نام الکساندر روایت میشه که در کودکی در یک تراژدی پدر و مادر و یکی از برادرانش رو از دست میده و مادربزرگ و پدربزرگش اون و خواهر دوقلوش رو بزرگ میکنن. الکساندر روایتگر خوشی ها و سختی های خاندانشه و خاطراتی از گذشته تا حال رو روایت میکنه.

این کتاب همونطور که از اسمش پیداست پر از غم های کوچک خاندان خالوم روئی هست. بعضی وقایع انقدر با جزئیات نوشته شدن که گاهی فکر میکردم شاید براساس واقعیت باشن یا از واقعیت الهام گرفته شده باشن. برای همین خیلی خوب میشه با وقایع ارتباط گرفت، مخصوصا ابتدای کتاب برای من خیلی تاثیرگذار بود.
مشکلی که با کتاب داشتم، این بود که هر فصل یه موضوع بود و یه خاطره رو روایت میکرد و فقط چند صفحه داشت. این باعث میشد هی از این شاخه به اون شاخه بپرم و وقتی چند روز میگذشت و میومدم کتابو باز میکردم اصلا یادم نبود تا کجا رسیدم و چی خوندم. یه سری خاطرات هم برام زیاد قابل توجه نبودن و اجمالی نگاه انداختم.
برام سه ستاره هست ولی بنظرم ممکنه اگر زمان دیگه‌ای بخونمش نظرم درموردش این نباشه. مثلا حوصله خوندن اون خاطرات معمولی رو هم داشته باشم. برای همین ۴ ستاره شد.
امیدوارم یه روزی در آینده دوباره بخونمش و ببینم با درک چند سال بعدم نظرم در موردش چه خواهد بود.
پیشنهادیه.

اگر دوست داشتید با کتاب بیشتر آشنا بشید، میتونید این مطلب رو در مورد کتاب بخونید:

https://vinesh.ir/%DA%A9%D8%AA%D8%A7%...

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember why I added this book to my wish list or who to thank, but it had been there for a while when I found it on my parents' shelves.

MacLeod's book is almost a microcosm of the history of the Gaelic-speaking population of Cape Breton, told through a smaller modern family, all of whom are descendants of Calum Ruadh, who arrived there in the late 18th century from Moidart in Scotland.

The narrator is Alexander MacDonald, known within the community as "gille beag ruadh", "the little red-haired boy". He has moved away from Cape Breton and is now a dentist in Ontario. At the start of the book he visits his alcoholic elder brother Calum in a shabby flat in Toronto, and the modern part of the story is largely an explanation of how he got there. Their parents were killed when trying to cross the ice to the island where their father worked as a lighthouse keeper, and Alexander and his twin sister were brought up by his grandparents while his elder siblings tried to fend for themselves as fishermen. They eventually leave to become itinerant workers in distant uranium mines, a job Alexander also did as a young man after a cousin was killed in an accident.

The whole thing is powerful and moving, and despite all of its darker elements this was a very enjoyable read.

[BrokenTune · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The ‘lamp of the poor’ is hardly visible in urban southwestern Ontario, although there are many poor who move disjointedly beneath it. And the stars are seldom clearly seen above the pollution of prosperity."

This, in short, is what I liked about the book. Yes, I do mean that particular quote.

I know this is one of those books that a lot of people seem to really like, and I can understand why, but for me this was a frustrating and really annoying read. To the extent that I even got annoyed with things I would not usually pay much attention to, like "Why is the guy's Gaelic name spelled in two different ways?".

To paraphrase the author himself:

"She could not help it, I suppose. Sometimes it is hard to choose or not to choose those things which bother us at the most inappropriate of times."

Anyway, No Great Mischief tells the stories of a family from when they first left Scotland for Canada in 1779 up to late 1970s/1980s (it's not really clear). There are plenty of colourful characters, plenty of stories of hardship, and an abundance of nostalgic references to Scotland - or rather one single event in Scottish history. For the most part, the references were limited to the Battle of Culloden and the Jacobite Uprising (around 1745/46).

And this, together with the nostalgia for anything Gaelic just really got on my nerves rather quickly.
Don't get me wrong I have rather a soft spot for Gaelic and I delight in watching BBC Alba sometimes just to hear it while reading the subtitles, but we're talking about a story relying on a few overused phrases and pretending as if everyone with the last name of MacDonald is fluent in it.

As for the Jacobite Uprising...Really, there is more to Scottish history and not everything that happened to the MacDonalds of Cape Breton in the 20th century can be blamed on or explained by a reference to an event in 1745/46.

Let me illustrate...

One of the MacDonald's relatives living in California is being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War and his parents send him to the branch of the family in Cape Breton to escape the draft. And the discussion is as follows:

" ‘From what I understand of this war,’ he continued, ‘those people are only fighting for their own country and their own way of being. It’s hard to say they should be killed for that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Wars touch all of us in different ways. I suppose we have been influenced by lots of wars ourselves. We are probably what we are because of the ’45. We are, ourselves , directly or indirectly the children of Culloden Moor, and what happened in its aftermath.’
‘Yes,’ he said with a smile, ‘the old men at home, the seanaichies, always used to say, “If only the ships had come from France …”
’‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘We’ll never know. Perhaps it was all questionable from the start. Talking about history is not like living it, I guess. Some people have more choice than others.’ "

Aha, yup. Culloden. Of course. Everything can be traced back to Culloden. No mention of the Union of Crowns, the bribery surrounding the Darien scheme, and the resulting Act of Union. Or why not go back further to the wars of Scottish independence?

Incidentally, I do get that part of the book's message is how people might be held back by living in the past - or as MacLeod puts it:

" ‘Living in the past is not living up to our potential.’ "

It's just that this message - conveyed as a joke - is rather muddled by a lot sentimental illusion.

[Great-O-Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Land der Bäume" ist der einzige Roman des kanadischen Schriftstellers Alistair MacLeod, der ein Meister der Kurzgeschichte ist. Direkt vor diesem Roman habe ich seinen Erzählband "Die Insel" mit allergrößter Begeisterung gelesen. Der Roman hat mir zwar gut gefallen, befindet sich aber meines Erachtens nach nicht ganz auf demselben Niveau. Viele der Inhalte der Erzählungen tauchen auch hier wieder auf. Es gibt auch wieder kraftvolle und poetische Bilder. Die Rahmenhandlung ist aber leider etwas spannungsarm und die Konstruktion führt zu einem mitunter sprunghaftem Erzählen.

Es geht um Alexander MacDonald. Er geht durch die Straßen Torontos, um für seinen alkoholkranken Bruder Calum Alkohol zu besorgen. Gleichzeitig reist er dabei in die Vergangenheit seiner Familie. In Geschichten erzählt er die Geschichte der Familie zurückreichend bis ins Jahr 1779. In diesem Jahr wanderte der Urururgroßvater des Protagonisten nach Kanada ein. Wie schon bei den Erzählungen geht es um Bergarbeiter, die gälischen Lieder der Heimat, das Meer, den Alkohol und den Traum vom Aufstieg, den Alexander und seine Schwester erreicht haben, der aber den meisten Familienmitgliedern verwehrt blieb.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Cape Breton in the nineteen seventies, No Great Mischief revolves around the visit of a successful orthodontist to his alcoholic brother eking out a miserable existence in a sqalid room above a shop in Toronto.

The visit is the starting point for a narrative that follows the fortunes of a group of Scots-Canadians descended from one legendary eighteenth century immigrant. Hardy and tightly-knit in the face of recurring tragedy, the extended family see themselves and the rest of the world with reference to their group identity. But it's an identity that is being eroded by modernity and the book is an elegy to the last generation of the clan to understand itself in this way.

The robust storytelling is woven around with imagery that explores the book's central themes of leadership, community, intransigence and betrayal. Poignant and intelligently written, this is a book quite unlike much contemporary fiction in that its concerns are not only with the personal but also with community.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of lives which turned out differently than was intended.
*
It is hard when looking at the pasts of other people to understand the fine points of their lives. It is difficult to know the exact shadings of dates which were never written down and to know the intricacies of events which we have not lived through ourselves but only viewed from the distances of time and space.
*
Perhaps,” he said after a pause, “it’s just the same sadness in different packages.” “Oh well,” said Grandma, “we should be grateful for what we’ve had.
*
It was so sudden and so unexpected that there seemed no place to turn. Nothing to grasp nor to hold. It seemed so complex –
*
All of us are better when we’re loved.
*
You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book about 16 years ago and gave it 4 stars then. Today I am giving it 5 stars. Middle age gives you a different perspective.

[McKel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially if they are descendents from Scotland or Ireland. It deals with the struggles that people have trying to hold onto their roots, yet becoming a part of a new society. It's the old world vs. the new world struggle. Some embrace the "modern" world and leave their family and their legacy to be part of this world, while others desperately hold onto whatever heritage they have left and forfeit a lot to do it.

Another aspect deals with a person's connection to their geography. A common thread in Canadian literature deals with nature's unwillingness to change to man's desire. For example, a plowed field will once again create weeds and take over again. It's a constant battle between man and nature.

This book is well written and well thought out. Worthy of reading.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book -- much more than I'd expected to from reading the description. I know very little about Canada's history or even its geography, so I actually found myself occasionally consulting a map to locate the relevant places from the text. The writing was beautiful and managed to be sentimental without being sappy or sarcastic. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for a powerful read that sneaks up on you as you're going along.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our narrator goes to get his alcoholic brother more to drink and relives a lifetime on the way.

Transplanted Scottish arrive, less than departed, in Canada and set up life, begetting more, and handing down wisdom and lore. Several generations later, our narrator, Alexander reflects.

Uranium miners, they hold tight to their clan. Alexander attains a degree in dentistry. He and his twin sister are the only two to go further in their immediate family. Chances brought by death, youth and loyalty.

We are transposed from early, mid and present family times. A tight family with much love and mostly happy times. It’s an easy read, gentle but for a few events.

As life unfolds, so does the history reveal. The journey to now, from there to here. Tightly woven, as a tartan.. Celtic knot.. family bond.

Beautiful for it all.

Bonus: you’ll pick up a bit of Gaelic along the pages.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the family history, though felt like I didn’t have enough knowledge of Scottish history to appreciate it all. Very similar themes to his short stories. I liked how the novel seamlessly moves from modern to past timelines.

[Ringa Sruogienė · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nostalgiška škotiško kraujo istorija.

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book, quickly, in less than twenty-four hours. It really held my attention, and I was interested to see how it ended. This novel won several major literary prizes when it was published in 1999 by Alistair Macleod, a Canadian writer. The narrator is an orthodontist, who frequently visits his alcoholic older brother in a rundown rooming house on downtown Toronto. These visits provide the opportunity for the narrator, Alexander MacDonald, to tell the story of his family's history in Canada, the clan of Calum the Red, dating back to their settlement in Cape Breton, Nova Sçotia, in 1779.

The present day members of the narrator's clan are forever ever linked to all Macdonalds of previous generations, proudly tracing their roots back to Scotland. The stories of how different generations coped with living in the "land of the trees"' beside the sea, are poignantly interwoven into the narrator' s present day task of visiting his brother Calum, an ex-con and a drunk, with the events of his childhood, and the relationships between himself, his twin sister, the grandparents who raised them and the multitudes of cousins and other relations who had a hand in his upbringing as a member of the clan. Music, oral history, homesteading in a difficult natural environment, uranium mining in Elliott Lake, and present day cultural influences are all tied together to suggest that regardless of where you go, you frequently take the past that has moulded you into your modern self, with you.

Macleod's writing style is somewhat sparse, yet poetic. He excels at creating vivid images in your mind's eye. I could visualize the scenes in the old kitchen, with members of the family gathered round, listening to a grandfather's story passed from generation to generation, with dogs panting on the floor, and whiskey or beer being passed around. I was down in that terrible uranium mine, feeling the silica and water running out of drenched gloves as Alex and his brother drilled into the tough Canadian Shield for 12 hours a day, since there was limited work to be found at home. How many folks from the east, have travelled great distances to find work, in our present day? A common thread and link to the past. Macleod is really adept at describing many examples like this one, making the past relevant.

I have yet to visit Nova Scotia, but will certainly think of the traditions and pride, the courage and steadfastness of the clans who settled Cape Breton, and whose relatives strive to keep their Celtic heritage alive, when I visit the land of the trees. I was moved by the story Macleod wove, and thought that his narrator' s grandfather, likely shared some of the qualities of my dad's parents. Around 1900, they tried valiantly to homestead in the northern reaches of Saskatchewan-without a doctor to birth three children or nurse a family through a long bout of scarlet fever. There were deadly blizzards when you could die only several yards from your cabin or barn, you lost hold of the life saving rope strung from cabin to barn through the long winter.The clan suffered its own winter tragedy, which had an enormous impact on the entire family, but particularly the narrator. To say more would lessen the impact, and deprive the reader of a crucial experience, and undermine the author's plan for the reader. I think reading this book brought me closer to my own past. That alone, makes it worthwhile.

[Natasha Penney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is timeless, lyrical, and stunningly written. It is a beautiful book of the bonds of family, ties to the past, blood being thicker than water, and the importance of being loved. It was wonderful.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alistair MacLeod doesn't waste a word as he tells the story of a fiercely loyal family bound by shared history and culture even as they move through tragedy after tragedy to make their way in the "new country."

The story is told through the eyes of Alexander MacDonald, orphaned as a child by a terrible tragedy and raised by his grandparents. Repetition of phrases, proverbs and themes, juxtaposition of current and past circumstances, reflection on the MacDonald clan's past tragic history, musings about the irony of trying to determine "which of us were the lucky ones" as each new family tragedy unfolds -- these and other literary devices powerfully impact the reader and convey the way in which members of this clan are sustained by a family history that lives on within them. Throughout the book runs a hauntingly beautiful Gaelic refrain, binding the family together across generations, regardless of modernization or the dementia of old age.

Reading this book while in a Cape Breton to visit my husband's MacDonald family made the reading of this book especially meaningful for me. MacLeod captures perfectly the culture of the island and the struggle to hold on to its unique identity and ancestral culture in the face of modernization and so many of its young people "heading west."

[Liam Crummey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A knockout. If the CBC ever tried to find "the great Canadian novel" (lol) the way America does every 4-8 years, this would have to be on the short list.

If the book had nothing else going for it other than its settings, it would still be world class. The evocations of small town maritime life, northern mining communities, and even upper class Toronto suburbia are gorgeous. Way too many Canadian novels are overly sentimental when it comes to hardscrabble communities. This book isn't. The descriptions are affectionate, but capture the cozy dreariness of fading rural outposts.

What truly elevates the book though is its mood. If there's such a thing as a Canadian theme, it has to be the embarrassment of the newly cosmopolitan, as they're relentlessly drawn back to their provincial roots. This book is the pinnacle of exactly that (Alice Munro is probably the queen of this 'genre,' but she writes short stories, so Alistair MacLeod still gets to claim the novel). If that weren't enough, I'm a sucker for understated personal turmoil, and this book has it in spades (in true British diaspora fashion).

NB: MacLeaod's short stories are also extremely worthwhile, but in a selected fashion. After a certain point, there are diminishing returns to the revelation that life as a cape breton coal miner and/or farmer was a rough go.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a Christmas gift from my mom, and it is also one that I would have bought for myself.
It won several international awards, and the back cover and inside pages are lush with glowing reviews from across the literary landscape of esteemed writers and reviewers.
(You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?)

It's a story that roots itself, for the most part, in my birthplace, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia And, it's a novelization about the MacDonald clan! This novel had so much going for it for me before I even cracked the cover open that it pains me now to write a disappointed review.
Not that it was that bad, but because it wasn't that great. There were some nice observances and some good imagery, but I don't know, the novel as a whole just had a certain blandness to it and didn't really do a whole lot for me.
It was short, so not a lot of time to devote to it so sure, give it a shot if you want. Who knows, you just may respond like the Globe and Mail reviewer who called this the book of the decade. Funny, I seem to find all "great writers (Ondaatje, etc.)" terribly bland and uninteresting. Maybe ahm jus' stoopid.

[Val · Rating 2 out of 5]

MacLeod is a wonderful writer, but I found nothing to lure me to this fictional memoir of a family descended from Scotland. Actually, I found most of the story quite boring other than certain characters' relationships with animals. The Gaelic inclusions were interesting but after a while I found myself skipping over these passages because I neither knew how to pronounce them nor how to translate them. I really do not understand all the praise for this book - it seemed that each time MacLeod hit upon a new mantra for his characters to use he would just repeat them over and over.

[Ian M. Pyatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful!

Beautiful story-telling from the beginning of the clan way back in Scotland to where they are in Calgary or back in the Maritimes & everything in between, great characters, a chance to learn about the love of family and about life in Nova Scotia.

I enjoyed hearing about this story in the voice of Alexander MacDonald.

If you've not read the authors "Island-The Collected Stories", I recommend you do.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely writing in a lackluster story. All the tools of a great writer: imagery, foreshadowing, a nice job of interweaving themes. Grandpa and grandfather are two memorable and contrapuntal characters. But the history was simplistic, a lot of repetition and such xenophobic Scottish posture that I could not give this more than 3 stars.

[Shazza Hoppsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8 rounded down for the dick jokes. A slice of Canadian history I didn’t know about. All those burley redheads who left the Scottish clans for a new life.
Nice thread of blood is thicker than water and how family holds community together.