Customer Reviews

No Great Mischief

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Alexander MacDonald, the narrator of this warm and ennobling family saga, comments to his brother that "Talking about history is not like living it...Some people have more choice than others." And there, in a nutshell, is the essence of this tender generational novel. The MacDonalds are, in many ways, an "ordinary" family on Cape Breton, but MacLeod creates a history for them so alive that the reader experiences it, too, feeling their sorrow and joy, admiring their pluck and independence, and celebrating their loyalty and bravery as they make the hard choices their lives require. They become heroes to us not because they have performed unusual feats but because they have achieved nobility within the collective memory of their own family.

Alexander MacDonald, the speaker, no longer lives on Cape Breton. An orthodontist, he travels weekly to Toronto to visit his alcoholic brother Calum, named for the family patriarch who came to the island in 1779 from Scotland. As he travels back and forth and reminisces, sometimes in Gaelic, with his much less fortunate brother, many generations of MacDonalds come to life, and we see how these forbears have shaped the two brothers and influenced their different, but shared, destinies.

MacLeod is very lyrical. Like a musician, he repeats certain themes. Gaelic phrases echo throughout, almost like a refrain. First names continue in different generations to remind the reader of historical resemblances and differences. And always, in every generation, he celebrates the dominance of the original Calum MacDonald and of Cape Breton in shaping their lives.

MacLeod never stoops to sentimentality, however. His main characters are all macho males living macho lives, and he includes no romantic love story to soften the harshness of life. Still, he has created one of the warmest, most loving, and enduring family stories anyone will ever find. The book pulses with heart, an unforgettable novel by a writer who is so precise in his structure and word choice that in his entire career he has produced only this one novel and fourteen short stories published in two extraordinary collections. Reading MacLeod is a great, rewarding pleasure for anyone interested in beautiful prose and careful execution. Mary Whipple

When backpacking in New Zealand, I bumped into a Scot who had just read this book. She commented that it was an amazing book by a Scottish author. I mentioned that the author was Canadian, but from Cape Breton which explained why she thought he was from Scotland. Two days later, I passed my copy of the book on to a Scot during a bus ride. Twenty minutes later, I glanced back to see him engrossed in the book. An hour later, when we were getting off the bus, he said he wanted to stay in his room that night to continue reading it.

In other words, it captivates quickly and keeps you wanted to stay with the MacDonald family.

Have any of the reviewers who have heaped praise on this book actually read it? No Great Mischief is a grossly padded short story. Riddled with cliche, it is a superb example of how not to write. MacLeod's prose is rife with redundancies. His bodies lie "silently" in their graves, a beached pilot whale has a "huge, gigantic" head. His symbols have the subtlety of a train wreck. The future alcoholic brother, as a small boy, sees his reflection in a beer bottle and remarks " I am in the bottle, it really is me in there". Apart from being a puerile symbol, it is impossible. Just try finding your reflection in a beer bottle. Ghosts wander in and out adding nothing to the narrative. MacLeod's hackneyed theme seems to be racial memory, ties of blood that transcend generations. There is nothing new here. What we have is a tedious catalogue of the minutiae of the author's life told in a laboured style that bears no resemblance to reality. Try reading one of MacLeod's conversations aloud. Nobody since the Brontes has gotten away with such stilted and contrived verbiage.
I read that the book was thirteen years in the writing. It feels like it.