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boney_george's review against another edition
2.5
The Boat, The Road to Rankin’s Point are my favourites.
maddyisnotilliterate's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.75
‘The Boat’, ‘The Road To Rankin’s Point’ and ‘The Tuning of Perfection’ were the best ones in my opinion. other than those, i was bored. the stories just kinda repeat themselves in many ways. and i get that’s probably the point…but i simply didn’t care.
thisbookishcat's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
3.0
Honestly, this should be a 3.5-star, but I couldn't bring myself to round up, just because of the amount of times the author made me uncomfortable with his fixation on male anatomy and sex.
That being said, this book is full of insecurities, dealing with change, the passage of time, tradition, and heritage. As someone born and raised in Nova Scotia with a strong Celtic background, this spoke to me in ways I wasn't expecting. Go back and read all of my updates for each short story if you want more details about my thoughts throughout.
I definitely recommend this book, but don't read it if you want something happy go-lucky because it definitely isn't that!
That being said, this book is full of insecurities, dealing with change, the passage of time, tradition, and heritage. As someone born and raised in Nova Scotia with a strong Celtic background, this spoke to me in ways I wasn't expecting. Go back and read all of my updates for each short story if you want more details about my thoughts throughout.
I definitely recommend this book, but don't read it if you want something happy go-lucky because it definitely isn't that!
lauryns's review
5.0
My guess is that we are all suckers for stories about the "homeland", which may be part of the appeal of this collection of short stories from Nova Scotia writer Alistair MacLeod. Although I was born in New York City, my mother is from Nova Scotia and my father from Newfoundland and those places seem to run deep in my veins. In any case, it is one of the most brilliant collections I've ever read. The stories are set primarily on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia; MacLeod so beautifully captures the rugged landscape and the hardships of that part of the world and writes with raw emotion that is powerful but never sentimental. It's been awhile since I've read it, and I don't have much of a memory for details, but it's definitely worth the read.
weaselweader's review against another edition
4.0
“You can cut the ties that bind but not without losing a part of yourself.”
The words that apply to Alistair MacLeod’s writing come easily to mind – lyrical, smooth, warm, mellifluous, evocative, provocative, clear, poetic, crisp … well, I think you get the idea. The man certainly has a way with words and one can easily imagine a group of rapt listeners gathered around a fireplace of an evening listening to MacLeod weave his tales of the culture of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island and the people who live there, those who have left the island or perhaps those have returned to the island – sometimes to visit, sometimes to stay and sometimes, like a migrating salmon, perhaps to die.
On two men enjoying a glass of heated rum and sugar and a pipe full of fresh tobacco, for example:
“We do not say anything for some time, sitting upon the chairs, while the sweetened, heated richness moves warmly through and from our stomachs and spreads upwards to our brains. Outside the wind begins to blow, moaning and faintly rattling the window’s whitened shutters.”
Life in Cape Breton is a world apart from life in the more modern world of, for example, 21st century Canada in metropolitan southern Ontario. But if life is different, then death is light worlds apart:
“Three of her brothers, as young men, perished in the accidental ways that grew out of their lives – lives that were as intensely physical as the deaths that marked their end. One as a young man in the summer sun when the brown-dappled horses bolted and he fell into the teeth of a mowing machine. A second in a storm at sea when the vessel sank while plying its way across the straits to Newfoundland. A third frozen upon the lunar ice fields of early March when the sealing ship became separated from its men in a sudden obliterating blizzard.”
“How lonely now and distant those lives and deaths of my grandmother’s early life. And how different from the lives and deaths of the three sons she has outlived. Men who left the crying gulls and hanging cliffs of Rankin’s Point to take the road into the larger world to fashion careers and lives that would never have been theirs on this tiny sea-washed farm. Careers that were as modern and as affluent as the deaths that marked their termination. Real estate brokers and vice-presidents of grocery chains and buyers for haberdashery firms seldom die in the daily routines of the working lives that they have chosen. The pencil and the telephone replace the broken, dangling reins and the marlinspike and the sealing club; and the adjusted thermostats and the methodic Muzak produce a regulated urban order far removed from the uncertainty of the elements and the unpredictability of suddenly frightened animals.”
If a potential reader from the USA is looking for a point of comparison, think perhaps of Garrison Keillor’s LAKE WOBEGON DAYS or John William Tuohy’s SHORT STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN. Canadian readers, on the other hand, might be reminded of their enjoyment of Stuart McLean's STORIES FROM THE VINYL CAFÉ.
The stories are, each and every one, first rate and enjoyable. When they’re assembled into an anthology like this, I have to say that the pace is such that the entire collection suffers and it certainly can’t be characterized as compelling. And that is the reason why I’ve withheld that final star on the review. But for those that are looking for bona fide small town Canadiana, you’ve certainly got the right book in your hands.
Paul Weiss
The words that apply to Alistair MacLeod’s writing come easily to mind – lyrical, smooth, warm, mellifluous, evocative, provocative, clear, poetic, crisp … well, I think you get the idea. The man certainly has a way with words and one can easily imagine a group of rapt listeners gathered around a fireplace of an evening listening to MacLeod weave his tales of the culture of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island and the people who live there, those who have left the island or perhaps those have returned to the island – sometimes to visit, sometimes to stay and sometimes, like a migrating salmon, perhaps to die.
On two men enjoying a glass of heated rum and sugar and a pipe full of fresh tobacco, for example:
“We do not say anything for some time, sitting upon the chairs, while the sweetened, heated richness moves warmly through and from our stomachs and spreads upwards to our brains. Outside the wind begins to blow, moaning and faintly rattling the window’s whitened shutters.”
Life in Cape Breton is a world apart from life in the more modern world of, for example, 21st century Canada in metropolitan southern Ontario. But if life is different, then death is light worlds apart:
“Three of her brothers, as young men, perished in the accidental ways that grew out of their lives – lives that were as intensely physical as the deaths that marked their end. One as a young man in the summer sun when the brown-dappled horses bolted and he fell into the teeth of a mowing machine. A second in a storm at sea when the vessel sank while plying its way across the straits to Newfoundland. A third frozen upon the lunar ice fields of early March when the sealing ship became separated from its men in a sudden obliterating blizzard.”
“How lonely now and distant those lives and deaths of my grandmother’s early life. And how different from the lives and deaths of the three sons she has outlived. Men who left the crying gulls and hanging cliffs of Rankin’s Point to take the road into the larger world to fashion careers and lives that would never have been theirs on this tiny sea-washed farm. Careers that were as modern and as affluent as the deaths that marked their termination. Real estate brokers and vice-presidents of grocery chains and buyers for haberdashery firms seldom die in the daily routines of the working lives that they have chosen. The pencil and the telephone replace the broken, dangling reins and the marlinspike and the sealing club; and the adjusted thermostats and the methodic Muzak produce a regulated urban order far removed from the uncertainty of the elements and the unpredictability of suddenly frightened animals.”
If a potential reader from the USA is looking for a point of comparison, think perhaps of Garrison Keillor’s LAKE WOBEGON DAYS or John William Tuohy’s SHORT STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN. Canadian readers, on the other hand, might be reminded of their enjoyment of Stuart McLean's STORIES FROM THE VINYL CAFÉ.
The stories are, each and every one, first rate and enjoyable. When they’re assembled into an anthology like this, I have to say that the pace is such that the entire collection suffers and it certainly can’t be characterized as compelling. And that is the reason why I’ve withheld that final star on the review. But for those that are looking for bona fide small town Canadiana, you’ve certainly got the right book in your hands.
Paul Weiss
abbythompson's review against another edition
5.0
There's not much to say that hasn't already been said. MacLeod is a master at capturing the history, daily life, and culture of beautiful and harsh Cape Breton. The short story format is great for when you need a quick read and MacLeod makes every single word count. His writing is so poignant and intense, it works best in short stories, where the punch is so much more visceral and immediate. My favorite story was Rankin's Point. Beyond words gorgeous.
maviemerveilleuse's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
bella19boo's review against another edition
5.0
By far the best book of short stories I've ever read
jeanetterenee's review against another edition
4.0
April 21, 2014: Rest in peace, Alistair MacLeod. Died April 20, 2014. I have been meaning to re-read this collection since I first read it almost six years ago. Now is a good time for me to do that, in memory of this extraordinary storyteller.
YOWZA, this guy can write! Holy prose, Batman!
4.5 stars for this beauty of a book.
This is a collection of sixteen stories, published between 1968 and 1999. All of the stories take place on or near the author's native Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes with such a quiet beauty about the local people and landscape, as the people go about making a living at fishing, coal mining, raising animals, and so on.
My favorite three stories:
BEST: "Island"----This story knocked my socks off. He managed to get all the elements of a fine novel in a story of only forty-four pages. It's about a woman who is the last in a long family line of lighthouse keepers. It's spooky and beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I found myself weeping a few pages from the end, and when I finished the story, I couldn't read anything else for hours afterward. I was absolutely stunned, and I still get chills thinking about this story. DAMN! Did I happen to mention this guy can WRITE?! (Are you rolling your eyes at me yet?)
#2) "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood"
#3) "To Everything There is a Season"
There was only one story I wasn't all that thrilled with: "Second Spring." It wasn't terrible, just so-so for me.
YOWZA, this guy can write! Holy prose, Batman!
4.5 stars for this beauty of a book.
This is a collection of sixteen stories, published between 1968 and 1999. All of the stories take place on or near the author's native Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes with such a quiet beauty about the local people and landscape, as the people go about making a living at fishing, coal mining, raising animals, and so on.
My favorite three stories:
BEST: "Island"----This story knocked my socks off. He managed to get all the elements of a fine novel in a story of only forty-four pages. It's about a woman who is the last in a long family line of lighthouse keepers. It's spooky and beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I found myself weeping a few pages from the end, and when I finished the story, I couldn't read anything else for hours afterward. I was absolutely stunned, and I still get chills thinking about this story. DAMN! Did I happen to mention this guy can WRITE?! (Are you rolling your eyes at me yet?)
#2) "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood"
#3) "To Everything There is a Season"
There was only one story I wasn't all that thrilled with: "Second Spring." It wasn't terrible, just so-so for me.
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