Island

Alistair MacLeod is a Canadian short story writer. He writes almost exclusively about the society of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and most of his stories are about working men (usually fishermen). Here he collects 16 of his shorter pieces, published between 1968 ('The Boat') and 1999 ('Clearances'). All the stories are elegantly written in a terse, yet often lyrical style. They are Canadian examples of a particular genre of North American short fiction, dominated by Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. In this kind of writing, the subject matter tends to be an emotionally charged moment in the lives of - usually working class - characters, the significance of which they may not fully understand. The style is realist, clipped and demotic. That said, this is not an especially populist form. Though something of an acquired taste, Carver, Ford, MacLeod et al. have all generally enjoyed a high cultural profile - a combination of stylized writing and minimal action constitutes a fairly aggressive claim to artistic significance. MacLeod's writing is not as forbidding as Carver's (let alone grandfather-of-the-genre Hemingway's) and his work has an honesty to it even when it waxes poetic and a tad prolix. That, coupled with a powerful sense of place and hardship, makes his work impossible to reduce to a set of generic conventions. This is great winter reading, if only because it is largely about people colder and worse off than oneself; read it as the year draws to a close, and enjoy the cold, crisp, nostalgic atmosphere it evokes. (Kirkus UK)