Point Books In Pursuance Of Island: The Complete Stories

Original Title:	Island
ISBN:	0393341186 (ISBN13: 9780393341188)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Cape Breton, Nova Scotia(Canada)

Island: The Complete Stories Paperback | Pages: 448 pages

Ilustration As Books Island: The Complete Stories

"The genius of his stories is to render his fictional world as timeless." —Colm Tóibín

The sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years.

A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.

Specify About Books Island: The Complete Stories

Title	:	Island: The Complete Stories
Author	:	Alistair MacLeod
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 448 pages
Published	:	November 28th 2011 by W. W. Norton Company (first published September 1989)
Categories	:	Short Stories. Fiction. Cultural. Canada. Literature. Canadian Literature

Rating About Books Island: The Complete Stories

Ratings: 4.19 From 2171 Users | 255 Reviews

Criticize About Books Island: The Complete Stories

Currently rereading these stories in anticipation of a trip to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and PEI in a few weeks. MacLeod is a superb writer. Some of the stories are pretty dark, but then I suppose life was sometimes the same for the people living there and making a living in the mines or on the water.

Essential reading for lovers of Scottish or Canadian island life. McLeod is himself a Canadian of Scottish descent, as with many of the inhabitants of these 16 stories, with backgrounds on the Western Isles or in the Scottish Highlands. The stories are in chronological order, set in a small area on the west coast of the Cape Breton peninsula, a beautiful, harsh land, where the struggle merely for shelter and food is enough to drive the young rising generations to Halifax, Toronto, and other

Macleods's redinditions of Cape Breton - from landscape to weather, to smells, sounds and attitudes. But I felt kind of boxed in (like the miners in his stories) in that narrow environment. All the stories seemed to hover around leaving the island and returning ad miners dying horrible deaths. I have put away the book at the halfway mark, looking for some variety elsewhere before I return to it. I get Cape bretton at the halfway mark - why do I need to go further?

Review: An exceptional collection of the quality short stories with poetic character makes this book a great pleasure to read. All the stories bring a reader closer to the beautiful part of the eastern edge of Canada, with its people, their customs and history. Truly a treat.Notes:- The Boat - a story of old fisherman and his son who decides to stay with his father till the end. They work together and eventually the father disappears one moment taken by the waves.- The Vastness of the Dark - a

This is just a short but important note in relation to this book which I have read in the last year.It simply contains the best writing I have read in the last year.I was devastated to learn he (MacLeod) had recently died. It's like this has taken one of the top runners out of the Best Writing in The World Marathon out of contention. There is a novel. I am saving it for Christmas. If you have not read these stories please put them on your list. They are one of life's secret and ever giving

Amazing amazing book of short stories. Bring you through a time and a place, through a lifetime, many lifetimes, to a people and a way of being that I'm sure most readers have never thought of before but can relate to nonetheless for the humanness of it.The stories are in chronological order and you can see MacLeod becoming a better and better writer as the years pass. His stories share slices of time that are also entire ways of being. They are short stories but rely on none of the cheap tricks

Exquisite, rich, evocativeIt took MacLeod a total of twenty years to finish the sixteen stories contained in this wonderful collection, and it shows. The prose is exquisitely wrought, with a formal but comforting lilt reminiscent of Faulkner and McCarthy in a way, and the storiesalmost all of themare extremely well-conceived and crafted. MacLeod doesn't rush, though; he doesn't just give you the quick excitement, the easy high, but feeds it to you slowly, as sumptuous meals ought to be fed, and