Description

Book Synopsis

These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child.

Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss.

As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: ''the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness. The stories stand securely outside of fashion while reflecting deep change''. Bringing together all Alistair MacLeod''s short fiction, and inc

Trade Review
A lifetime's achievement in more than one sense * Sunday Times *
Startling in their simple perfection * Sunday Tribune *
Provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness * Guardian *
Beautifully crafted stories: elegiac, honest, proud, and both eloquent and taciturn, like their subjects...a wonderfully talented writer * Margaret Atwood *
Rarely does a great writer offer himself to us with an oeuvre so complete * New York Times Book Review *

Island

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    £10.44

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    RRP £10.99 – you save £0.55 (5%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Thu 25 Jun 2026.

    A Paperback / softback by Alistair MacLeod

    2 in stock

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      Publisher: Vintage Publishing
      Publication Date: 05/09/2002
      ISBN13: 9780099422327, 978-0099422327
      ISBN10: 0099422328

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child.

      Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss.

      As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: ''the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness. The stories stand securely outside of fashion while reflecting deep change''. Bringing together all Alistair MacLeod''s short fiction, and inc

      Trade Review
      A lifetime's achievement in more than one sense * Sunday Times *
      Startling in their simple perfection * Sunday Tribune *
      Provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness * Guardian *
      Beautifully crafted stories: elegiac, honest, proud, and both eloquent and taciturn, like their subjects...a wonderfully talented writer * Margaret Atwood *
      Rarely does a great writer offer himself to us with an oeuvre so complete * New York Times Book Review *

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