No Great Mischief

Raw and poetic

Prose bordering on verse that illuminates and connects family history and land. A page turner virtually without 'plot', the cadences of the sentences and the evocation of place make you read on.

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Beautiful and melancholy

MacLeod exhibits enormous skill in describing the complicated concrescence of a family displaced in time and distance. Brilliant writing. It has the feeling of autumn built into its very fiber.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Astonishing and Sad

What most impresses me about this novel is how gently yet irrevocably it moves through the life and memory of the protagonist (one of many Alexander MacDonalds) and his family, both known and remembered. Starting in the time of the Highland Clearances of Scotland (which did not destroy the MacDonalds' sense of clan and kinship), it moves through their settlement on Cape Breton and slow accommodation to the modern world. The twentieth century, sadly, seems almost certain to accomplish what destitution and violence cannot: the destruction of the clan's sense of itself. Through lovely metaphors, frequent echoes of earlier events, and richly simple details, McLeod gives the reader a keen appreciation for what one character in the story describes as 'the difference between what is accurate and what is true.'

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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