prendrelemick
10-28-2011, 03:35 AM
This year I have been doing un-targeted reading, that is reading books that happen to cross my path, mostly borrowed or given, rather than seeking out titles.
It is now nearly November and at last I have found a good one. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod is the story of the descendants of Calumn MacDonald and his family, who left the Highlands of Scotland in 1779 and settled in Nova Scotia. Moving from a place with too few trees to a place with too many. There they spread out and multiply and became the clann Chalum Ruiadh or The Clan of Red Calumn. Because of their early interbreeding, the traits of red or coal-black hair and dark eyes are fixed and intensified, and they are recognisable to each other where ever they go.
The story is narrated by Alexander MacDonald a dentist and direct descendent of the clan founder. It is ostensibly set in the 1980's He is visiting his older brother, a down and out alcoholic and remembering times past. For the clann Chalum Ruiadh “the past” goes well beyond living memory and into the realms of family legend. It is a history that has been passed down in Gaelic songs and fireside tales stretching back as far as Culloden and the Glencoe massacre, stories of dogs, who cared too much and tried too hard. Stories of the Highlanders upon The Plains of Abraham under General Wolfe at Quebec, of hard lives and quick deaths.
The distinction between past and present seems unclear for clann members. When one of them visits Scotland in the 1980's she meets a woman on a lonely shore, they immediately recognise each other as family. She is invited to the woman's home and the spell of the past takes them over, in a mixture of English and Gaelic she hears the story of the day Chalum Ruiadh left Scotland and of the faithful brown dog that leaped into the sea and swam after the family. The story has been passed down for generations on both sides of the Atlantic it is a story she has known all her life, but for the first time, she hears it from the perspective of those who were left standing on the shore.
The book is a collection of such stories, lovingly told but without any cloying sentimentality. The tone is nostalgic (which I find irresistible – even second hand.) There are stories of great characters, of hard men and resilient women, and we see that a derelict drunken brother was once a man to be reckoned with, and that we all owe a debt to the past.
An 8 out of 10 I think.
It is now nearly November and at last I have found a good one. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod is the story of the descendants of Calumn MacDonald and his family, who left the Highlands of Scotland in 1779 and settled in Nova Scotia. Moving from a place with too few trees to a place with too many. There they spread out and multiply and became the clann Chalum Ruiadh or The Clan of Red Calumn. Because of their early interbreeding, the traits of red or coal-black hair and dark eyes are fixed and intensified, and they are recognisable to each other where ever they go.
The story is narrated by Alexander MacDonald a dentist and direct descendent of the clan founder. It is ostensibly set in the 1980's He is visiting his older brother, a down and out alcoholic and remembering times past. For the clann Chalum Ruiadh “the past” goes well beyond living memory and into the realms of family legend. It is a history that has been passed down in Gaelic songs and fireside tales stretching back as far as Culloden and the Glencoe massacre, stories of dogs, who cared too much and tried too hard. Stories of the Highlanders upon The Plains of Abraham under General Wolfe at Quebec, of hard lives and quick deaths.
The distinction between past and present seems unclear for clann members. When one of them visits Scotland in the 1980's she meets a woman on a lonely shore, they immediately recognise each other as family. She is invited to the woman's home and the spell of the past takes them over, in a mixture of English and Gaelic she hears the story of the day Chalum Ruiadh left Scotland and of the faithful brown dog that leaped into the sea and swam after the family. The story has been passed down for generations on both sides of the Atlantic it is a story she has known all her life, but for the first time, she hears it from the perspective of those who were left standing on the shore.
The book is a collection of such stories, lovingly told but without any cloying sentimentality. The tone is nostalgic (which I find irresistible – even second hand.) There are stories of great characters, of hard men and resilient women, and we see that a derelict drunken brother was once a man to be reckoned with, and that we all owe a debt to the past.
An 8 out of 10 I think.