Island: The Complete Stories

The stories in "Island" tell about death, family ties and the pull of traditions transplanted from Scotland to the harsh New World. Sixteen spare, evocative masterworks: men and women acting out their own peculiar mortality against the unforgiving landscape of cape Breton Island.

The sixteen exquisitely crated crafted stories contained in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created crated 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 after father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly disposes of the family horse. A passionate girl who grown 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 hiss his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The the events, whether violent or tender, that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.