Customer Reviews

The Lost Salt Gift of Blood: New and Selected Stories

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The raw emotional power I encountered within these stories sprang the off page like a fist, fracturing my complacency over and over. Nothing but Hemingway compares to Macleod's writing style.Uncomfortable truths lie here, expressed with such skill and economy that they elude memory, leaving the uneasy feeling that one has looked too deeply into a troubled soul and seen more than one should; it's hard to believe that the events described didn't happen, if not to the author, at least someone known to him.I believe there is no other writer in the English language with this mastery of short fiction.

This is a modern masterpiece, much neglected even in Canada. MacLeod's writing is full of the "blas" (gaelic for "taste") that is or was Cape Breton. These stories are contemporary and ancient. Though they deal with modern issues and people, you can't help feeling these stories are very old. They reveal things unearthly and magical without ever taking their feet off the ground or closing their eyes. And there is a sad sense of loss that everyone close to things old and beautiful must feel in our modern culture.