Island
by Alistair MacLeod

List Price: $14.00
Pages: 448
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0375713042
Publisher: Vintage Books

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.

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1. The characters in Island share a great degree of pride in their heritage and their homeland. How do the stories convey their pride in their lives, their professions, their heritage, their landscape, and their families? Do they also experience joy and happiness?

2. The stories are characterized by thematic and stylistic paradoxes such as myth vs. reality, remoteness vs. nearness, destiny vs. free will, reality vs. romance, and the strange vs. the familiar. How is each of these paradoxes manifested in the stories? Does MacLeod reconcile these paradoxes? Do you detect other thematic or stylistic paradoxes in the stories?

3. In "The Return" the grandmother tells her grandson, "It is not that easy to change what is a part of you" [p. 92]; in "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun" the son realizes, "You cannot not know what you do know" [p. 320]; and in "Clearances" the old man muses to his dog about the life that each of them is currently leading, "Neither of us was born for this" [p. 430]. How do each of these statements convey the theme of fate in Island ? How do the characters cope with their sense of destiny?

4. What is the significance of MacLeod's frequent use of relationships to identify his characters (e.g., fathers, sons, mothers, grandfathers, etc.) and his spare use of his characters' given names?

5. The majority of the stories are told in the first person by a male narrator. What is the effect of this style on the reader's perception of the events? How is the narrator both an active participant and an outside observer of these events? Does the "narrator" ever judge? Is it MacLeod's voice that the reader hears?

6. Does the description "entombed feelings" ["The Closing Down of Summer," p. 197] describe the feelings of many characters in Island ? How are emotions expressed in Island ? Does the physical landscape reflect the emotional isolation of the characters, or does it cause their isolation? Why might have MacLeod selected the word island for the title?

7. MacLeod compares "ivory white gulls" to "overconditioned he-men" in "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood" [p. 119], a ship that can save a drowning man to Santa Claus in "To Every Thing There Is a Season" [p. 210], and a memory to a scar in "Vision" [pp. 321-2]. How do these and other examples of MacLeod's original and often elaborate metaphors reinforce the themes of the stories in which they appear?

8. How do the earlier stories differ from the later stories in theme, tone, and style? Have the characters evolved?

9. The descriptions of the animals' life cycles in "Second Spring" conveys most directly the notion running through Island that the path of life is not linear but cyclical, and, moreover, that existence is not constrained to one person's lifetime but rather follows a continuum from one generation to the next. The narrator in "The Closing Down of Summer" muses, "Perhaps we are but becoming our previous generation" [p. 193]. Does this view of life give comfort, or is it stifling? Can one break out of this cycle? How does MacLeod's narrative style and method, particularly in "Winter Dog" and "Clearances," reinforce the theme of the intertwining of lives?

10. How is religion distinguished from superstition in the lives of the characters in Island ? What role does each play? Is it religion or something else that provides a moral code of behavior for the inhabitants of Cape Breton?

11. Despite their portrayal of a way of life probably foreign to many readers, on what level are the stories universally familiar? To which elements can the reader most readily relate?

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"A great writer…. Talent like his needs no hype."

—The New York Times Book Review

"The work of a superb…patient craftsman."

—The Boston Globe

"This stormy Cape Breton Island…is a place you will never forget, illuminated by a writer whose name you will always remember."

—San Francisco Chronicle

"A remarkable reading experience…. MacLeod clearly has a distinctive literary voice… His writing is seamless, rather like a Heifetz CD or a Sinatra or Fitzgerald song…. His stories are artfully crafted."

—The New York Times

"MacLeod writes of bonds of love and family that transcend time and distance and all the circumstantial dividers that life imposes, and does it with as much heart as any writer ever has."

—The Dallas Morning News

"An extraordinary excursion in exquisite prose that will satisfy and sustain you for many years."

—The Tampa Tribune

"Like the poignant lament of a Scottish piper…. A masterful evocation of a displaced people caught between past and present."

—Kirkus

"A treat for anyone who loves good writing."

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"MacLeod is, in the truest sense, the bard of his native Cape. His stories are strong, deep, and as powerful as the sea: absolutely memorable."

—Andrea Barrett

"Each story is charged with a place and way of life both alien and somehow familiar…. The honest emotion is as sensually rendered as the blood, salt, and waterlogged wood of Cape Breton…and every word feels true."

—Frederick Busch

"One of the great undiscovered writers of our time."

—Michael Ondaatje

"It's hard to think of anyone else who can cast a spell the way Alistair MacLeod can."

—Alice Munro

"Alistair MacLeod is a wonderfully talented writer."

—Margaret Atwood

"This stormy Cape Breton Island . . . is a place you will never forget, illuminated by a writer whose name you will always remember."

—San Francisco Chronicle