Alistair MacLeodNo Great Mischief: A Novel

Alistair MacLeod's "No Great Mischief" is a beautifully written, and terribly melancholy, story of Canadian Scots. Any number of times, you will well-up with tears, as you read about one sad episode after another, of life-changing misfortunes (mostly self-caused) that wreak havoc on the far flung, but emotionally and fiercely close clan MacDonald.My only complaint about this book is that the story as a whole doesn't really go anywhere. It's like reading a series of excellently serialized chapters published every Monday in The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto, or more likely, in the Halifax, Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. The 43 short chapters are indeed well-connected, however, and never vary from the overall theme of immigration, hardship, family love and cohesion, together with individual and group despair. Despite the additions and deletions of various characters over the course of the story (birth, death, marriage, friendship), you could, in other words, pick up the story at Chapter 13 or Chapter 31 and become totally engrossed without knowing what came before or after. That's how I read it: two or three or four chapters at a time, often putting the book down for days after reading 30 pages or so. To achieve this, the author indulges in some repetition. It isn't a page-turner, no matter how gorgeous the writing is. In fact, it's quite a slow-moving story, by design, and one must accept the rhythm of the story-teller. The structure of the story and its narration are part and parcel of the ethnicity and now-extinct way of life on display in the tale.The main character and first person narrator, Alexander, a 40s something orthodontist, is rather dull, actually, in deliberate (literary, I suppose) contrast to virtually every other person in the story. All of the 15 or so primary characters are really distinct and unique.The touching part of the story is its absolute and unfailing dedication to "family and blood," to clannish pride and prejudice, and to acceptance of fate, but with gratitude toward life itself.Page 56, "'She was descended from the original Calum Ruadh dog,' said grandpa when he heard the news, pouring himself a water glass full of whisky which he drank without a flinch. `The one who swam after the boat when they were leaving Scotland. It was in those dogs to care too much and to try too hard.'"Page 176, "'It is difficult for a man ever to give advice to his father. Even if you try to think of him as just another man he is still your father and you are his child, regardless of how old you have become.'" All of us are better when we're loved, we readers are told, time and time again. It's true, and this book reveals many such truths.Though the scenes at the Canadian Shield mine location are fantastic, there is way too much death, violence, alcohol, and just plain bad behavior by way too many characters in the story for me to readily identify with any of them, except for perhaps "grandma and grandpa," Alexander's father's mother and father - who raised his sister and him from age 3, and also his maternal grandfather. Both Alexander and his sister are, it seems, kind of half-dead and quite uninteresting - in part because of the life they themselves chose, an upscale, educated sanitized existence, far away from the grubby family roots of their siblings and grandparents.I did not like the final 40 pages - at all. Calum's crime and subsequent trial seemed contrived. Yes, it is fiction, but by the time I got to these ending pages, I didn't appreciate that contrivance. But, MacLeod had to tie all the loose ends up somehow, giving an explanation for the Calum's wasted life and Alexander's feelings of guilt.There's a sense of Ernest Hemmingway here, in MacLeod's parsimonious prose. It's also a kind of Canadian history lesson about the 1960s and 1970s, and of those who came from Scotland so long ago to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.It's a 4 on Amazon's rating scale, and the reason I rate it that highly is because the author is a superb story-teller, and his writing is lyrical and very easy to read.

That is, the family (clan) of the red Calum. Originally, they were MacDonalds from the Highlands of Scotland. Many have flaming red hair. In 1779, a 55-year-old Calum Ruadh left Scotland with his twelve children and settled on Cape Breton Island (now part of Nova Scotia). He was the progenitor of a New World clann Calum Ruadh. Through succeeding generations, through good times and bad (and the hard times tended to predominate), the clan stuck together, exemplifying two maxims: "blood is thicker than water" and "always look after your blood".More than two centuries later, the great-great-great-grandson of that immigrant Calum Ruadh tells the story of his branch of the clan in the memorable NO GREAT MISCHIEF. The narrator is Alexander MacDonald, born in 1945 on Cape Breton Island. He tells the story looking back from sometime in the 1980s. The other principal family members are his oldest brother Calum, his twin sister (oddly unnamed), his paternal grandparents who raised him and his sister after their parents died in a freakish event when they were three, as well as his maternal grandfather (all three grandparents being cousins and members of the clann Calum Ruadh).The story is set mainly in three locations: 1) Cape Breton Island, where it ranges over decades and over generations; 2) a uranium mine in Ontario on the Canadian Shield in the year 1968, where Alexander MacDonald works with his three living older brothers, joining them to take the place of a cousin (also named Alexander MacDonald) who was killed in an industrial accident that probably was not an accident; and 3) Toronto in the 1980s, where the narrator goes to check in on his brother Calum, who is drinking himself to death in a fleabag apartment house after serving a probated life sentence for killing a French Canadian back in 1968 at the uranium mine.There are three very memorable scenes: A) when the narrator Alexander MacDonald's parents and a brother suddenly disappear one cold March night, their dog somehow surviving, while walking across the ice to the island lighthouse where they are caretakers; B) older brother Calum whistling for the horse Christie to come and haul the boat up on the shore after returning from fishing out on the sea, followed by Calum using Christie to yank an impacted and infected molar from his mouth; and C) an impromptu session of folk music and dancing at the uranium mine in which the clann Calum Ruadh miners are joined by their usually bitter rivals, a French-Canadian group of miners.NO GREAT MISCHIEF is both grand and touching. But it also is flawed, unlike the nigh perfect short stories of Alistair MacLeod collected under the title ISLAND, which I read and reviewed five years ago (it was one of the ten best books I read in 2012). The two books have many similarities and share certain themes -- especially the quiet, closely-knit quality of life on Cape Breton Island up to, say, 1950, and the homesickness and nostalgia experienced by many who left the island after 1950 to make their way in the wider, modern world. But the short stories are decidedly superior to the novel. The novel is not nearly as tight. A few of its events are too implausible. There are a few slips of craftsmanship in MacLeod's prose. And the novel is a little too contrived and sentimental for my taste. Frankly, I am mildly surprised that it won the 2001 International Dublin Literary Award. Still, it is better than most contemporary novels.

This novel is a beautifully written novel about my people.

I have an aversion to reading works of fiction. The book is loaded with testimonials to the author. I bought this book and the volume of his short stories titled "Island" (which I am only starting to read) on the recommendation of Deal Hudson on his radio program "Church and Culture." If you're worried, there's not much "church" in this book.The overall plot is the author driving to buy some booze for an elderly relative in Toronto and returning to his home in SW Ontario. That long trip is the occasion for many flashbacks to his family history. Having read the book over several sittings, I developed minor mental vertigo as he flashes backward and forward in time. One must also accept the author's device of slipping into Gaelic phrases, which is really important to the stories.There are some dog stories blended in, to heighten the theme of loyalty in his family -- the dogs live in that integrated past and present sense of time. That is the motif for the humans also, that the past is always relevant to the present moment. And, as with all family history, the novel is laced with tragedy and death.The past is so important as to justify the author making the long trip to buy some liquor and spend some time with this relative, to value the time and the moments as long as they exist.There's probably more levity in the book than I could catch on to. Certainly one moment is when his grandmother declares that she knows everything there is to know about menstruation.

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.

Beautifully written, with such sadness, tenderness and longing. A memorial to the spirit, but also the melancholy, of Scottish highland history and the betrayal of its people. A stark statement of lives, and time, lost.

I really enjoyed this book. Maybe as an expatriate Scot most of my life it struck a chord with me and my roots back in Scotland. I think anyone would enjoy this book, which is the tale of an extended family in modern day Canada, whether you have roots in Scotland or not. In line with our national (Scottish) characteristic it is a sad tail and parts of it filled me with such sadness that I found it uplifting to think how easy my life has been compared to these Highlanders who were in all but words, forcibly removed from the ancient land of their birth by the betrayal of their own kin. I enjoyed it so much I bought a copy for my Sister.

Terrific read, with a plot structure that incorporates both the evicted tenants of the Highland Clearances and the lives of their descendants in Nova Scotia. The settings in Halifax and Cape Breton Island remind me of my mother's upbringing there - her father was an economic migrant from England to Canada in the 1920's - and evoke my own more recent visits to the area from Scotland, where the memory of the Clearances still looms large.

This is one of my most favourite books . In form really a set of short stories linked by a narrator,this warm heart-rending saga of the McDonald family of Cape Breton Island is the universal tale of immigrants everywhere.It tells of the journey from close knit community ,harsh hard work on the land and against the elements to dispersal in the wider world,emotional breakdowns , affluence for some and sorrow for others .It is a lyrical love song to Cape Breton .