International Dublin Literary Award
No Great Mischief
Set around Cape Breton Island, the novel spans generations to trace a Scottish immigrant family's memory, labor, and loss. Family story and local history overlap in a lyrical, elegiac narrative.
Work Information
Family memory and local history overlap against the landscape of Cape Breton.
Centered on a family that emigrates from Scotland to Canada's east coast, the novel quietly accumulates stories of siblings, kinship, communal memory, loss, and inheritance.
Review Summaries
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Its restrained portrayal of family bonds and loss is widely admired. The dense nostalgia and lyricism are part of its appeal, though the slow pace divides opinion.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Published
- 2001-06-01
- Pages
- 272 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.8 x 2.2 x 19.6 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780099283928
- ISBN-10
- 0099283921
- Price
- 2546 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
In 1779, driven out of his home, Calum MacDonald sets sail from the Scottish Highlands with his extensive family. After a long, terrible journey he settles his family in 'the land of trees', and eventually they become a separate Nova Scotian clan: red-haired and black-eyed, with its own identity, its own history. It is the 1980s by the time our narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of his family, a thrilling and passionate story that intersects with history: with Culloden, where the clans died, and with the 1759 battle at Quebec that was won when General Wolfe sent in the fierce Highlanders because it was 'no great mischief if they fall'.
Alistair MacLeod was born in 1936 and raised in Cape Breton, Nove Scotia. MacLeod is the author of two short story collections, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986) and the novel, No Great Mischief , published in 1999. Written over the course of thirteen years, No Great Mischief won numerous Canadian literary awards and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. All of his published short stories, plus one new piece, were collected in Island , published in 2000. Alistair MacLeod died in 2014.
Reviews
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Superb writing
MacLeod's books don't find their way into English bookshops with great regularity and that is a real shame for he is simply a wonderful writer. MaLeod writes in a wonderfully paired-back, economical style. He reminds me very much of the late, wonderful Irish writer John McGahern, indeed, it was through McGahern's praising of MacLeod that I first came across him. If you've not read McGahern then - stylistically - MacLeod reminds me of Richard Ford, Annie Proux or Raymond Carver. His material is always drawn from the Gallic speakers of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, descendants of those who for various reasons travelled from Scotland to North America at the time of the clearances. This contemporary story looks at the life of one such family and their wider clan and alternates between telling the story of the clans movement to the story of such a tight nit community as it begins to become more diluted within the vastly wider world of North America. A great story and easy to read - this can easily be consumed in one or two reading sessions. Definitely recommended.
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Contestant for the great Canadian novel!
Basically it is about a family in Cape Breton...but we go back to Scottish history and how their shared past shapes them all. There are quite a few themes here, for a relatively short novel. Mainly the family ties of love, shared history, and fierce loyalty. Exile and loss. And these 'themes', especially the exile and loss, find their way into the narrative in regard to other ethnic groups within Canada not just the MacDonald clan. In a way the book is about Canada. It is really beautiful writing, with many haunting scenes that stay with you. I don't know, I am finding it hard to articulate in a few lines what it is about. Suffice to say that the book really moved me and I won't soon forget it.
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Alistair MacLeod is a Canadian national treasure
There is a harsh beauty in Alistair MacLeod's fiction just as there is in the landscape of his native Cape Breton. HIs stories evolve in well-crafted sentence after well-crafted sentence, a slow accretion of tragedies both large and small and ultimately of hard-won grace. "No Great Mischief" is no exception. Some say nothing much happens in this novel, and if one is looking for plot-driven fiction, hero against villain, that is probably true. But MacLeod captures something far more as he paints the relationship between two brothers, their shared and individual sorrows and the love that binds them to their homeland, to their clan, and to each other. I found this sad, celebratory, and elegaic novel impossible to put down, and weeks later, I'm still haunted by it.
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A great book - a great author - a great story - sad and happy, but wonderful
This product was great - well written - and to do with my family history. i just loved it - great author - great story.
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Ein weiter Weg in eine neue Heimat
Die Erzählung beschreibt den langen Weg schottischer Auswanderer nach Nova Scotia, Kanada. Die melancholisch stimmende Handlung verbindet geschichtliche Rückblicke mit den tagtäglichen Herausforderungen der Einwanderer. Auch in der neuen Heimat bleiben ihre familiären Wurzeln erhalten und führen zu einer wahrnehmbaren Identität, der des "clann Chalum Ruaidh". Begleitet und erzählt von einem erfolgreichen Familienmitglied steht im Mittelpunkt der Handlung die Geschichte des durch den tragischen Verlust der Eltern und der mangelnden sozialen Betreuung entgleisenden Bruders. Die spannend erzählte Geschichte endet versöhnlich mit der Rückkehr des Gestrauchelten in den Kreis seiner Familie. Hochaktuell vor dem Hintergrund der heutigen globalen Wanderungsbewegungen.