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list price: $21.00
edition:Paperback
category: Fiction
published: Jan 2001
ISBN:9780771055706
publisher:
McClelland & Stewart
Description
Alexander MacDonald guides us through his family’s mythic past as he recollects the heroic stories of his people: 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.
Contributor Notes
Alistair MacLeod was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1936 and raised among an extended family in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In his early years, to finance his education he worked as a logger, a miner, and a fisherman, and he wrote vividly and sympathetically about such work.
His early studies were at the Nova Scotia Teachers College, St. Francis Xavier, the University of New Brunswick and Notre Dame, where he took his Ph.D. For more than three decades, he taught creative writing at the University of Windsor, Ontario, where he was a professor of English.
MacLeod’s only novel, No Great Mischief, won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Trillium Book Award, the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction, and at the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards, MacLeod won for Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year.
He was also the author of two internationally acclaimed collections of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). In 2000, these two books, accompanied by two previously unpublished stories, were brought together in a single-volume edition entitled Island: The Collected Stories.
Alistair MacLeod died in April 2014.
Awards
- Winner, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- Winner, Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award - Author of the Year
- Winner, Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award - Fiction Book of the Year
- Winner, Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award - Fiction Book of the Year
- Winner, Trillium Book Award
Editorial Review
“MacLeod is MacLeod, the greatest living Canadian writer and one of the most distinguished writers in the world. No Great Mischief is the book of the year—and of this decade. It is a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece.”
—Globe and Mail
“No Great Mischief is one of the best Canadian novels I’ve read in years. It’s a tale of truth about people who care for one another and for the living world around them. A lament and a celebration, it will endure.”
–Farley Mowat
“This is a simply great novel. The simplicity lies in the device of the plot. The greatness lies in its scope, imagination, and execution. . . . His message beguiles, his prose captivates, and his narrative never loosens a deceptively gentle grip.”
–Glasgow Herald
“You will find scenes from this majestic novel burned into your mind forever.”
–Alice Munro
“A triumph of fiction. . . . [MacLeod’s] storytelling is taut and lucid. His characters possess strength and depth. They linger in your mind.”
–The Economist (U.K.)
“[A] mesmerizing, evocative story, infused with grace and wisdom.”
–Jury Citation, Trillium Award
“A powerful, intricate work.”
–Toronto Sun
“MacLeod’s world of Cape Breton . . . has become a permanent part of my own inner library.”
–New York Times Book Review
“No Great Mischief feels like a book that’s gone deep and means to stay.”
–Quill & Quire (starred review)
“A masterpiece of storytelling.”
–Time Out (London)
“This book is a jewel. . . . Destined to become one of the most memorable Canadian novels of the decade.”
–Hamilton Spectator
“A haunting and beautiful book. . . . MacLeod’s descriptions are remarkable.”
–Montreal Gazette
“No Great Mischief is a lesson in the art of storytelling.”
–Times Literary Supplement
“The work speaks of great loves . . . and tragic losses that will move readers in every corner of the world.”
–Publishers Weekly
“A robust novel, celebrating all of the joys and tragedies life has to offer.”
–Edmonton Journal
“MacLeod’s world, hard and real, has also the feel of resonant myth about it, enduring truths couched in pellucid prose.”
–The Scotsman
“A great, hauntingly beautiful and enduring book.”
–Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Few readers will fail to be moved by No Great Mischief.”
–Toronto Star
“[MacLeod’s] writing is of a quality that most writers can only dream of achieving.”
–National Post
“The book is pervaded by humour and colour, intensely vivid, and very, very moving.”
—The Independent (U.K.)
