Can I read Island- The Collected Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod on EtoBox?

Island- The Collected Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod by MacLeod, Alistair is a work of fiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Island- The Collected Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod about?

"Once there was a family with a Highland name who lived beside the sea." So begins "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun," a 1985 entry from Island. The story continues, "And the man had a dog of which he was very fond." And there you have the basic elements of an Alistair MacLeod story: dog, family, and sea. The author--whose 2000 novel No Great Mischief won him a measure of long-overdue acclaim--shuffles these elements into a surprisingly infinite variety of configurations, always with the same precise, confident, quiet language. His big theme is the abandonment of the rural. Though his characters live in the fishing communities of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, the seaside isn't a place where they dwell contentedly. In half the stories, young men and boys feel a pull toward academe and the center of the country. In the other half, academically successful middle-aged men return to the wild eastern coast of Canada to try to reclaim the life they left behind. Both dilemmas are impossible to resolve--no one can be both a city mouse and a country mouse--and MacLeod wisely doesn't offer easy solutions. What makes the writing sing, though, is the specificity of his descriptions of rural life. H

Who reads Island- The Collected Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod?

Author

MacLeod, Alistair

Publisher

Vintage/Ebury (a Division of Random

Published

1970

Language

EN

ISBN

9780771055683

Category

work of fiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories

Rating

4.21 / 5 (805 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14