Editing Alistair MacLeod (section)

==Critical reaction==

===Short stories===
MacLeod's short stories have generated much critical acclaim, especially from Canadian reviewers. In her review of ''Island'', for example, [[Frances Itani]] calls the book of collected stories about miners, fishermen and Scottish Highlanders who came to Cape Breton "simply stunning." She also praises the stories for their emotional impact. "Whether you are reading his stories for the first or for the eighth time, they will make you wonder and they will make you weep. The quality of the writing matches the very best in the world." Itani describes "The Boat", MacLeod's first published story (1968) as possibly the most moving and powerful in Canadian literature. For her, all of the stories show a master craftsman at work. "Every story is expertly paced. The internal rhythm has been so perfected, the stories appear to unfold by themselves. There are no tricks; there is no visible or superimposed planning or plotting. Events unfold as unpredictably as life itself."<ref name="Itani">Frances Itani. "Life work of a master: Alistair MacLeod's stories are among the best in the world." ''The Ottawa Citizen'', April 30, 2000, p.C14.</ref> The essayist Joshua Bodwell wrote about discovering MacLeod while traveling in Cape Breton just months before his first child was born, and then later reading "The Boat" aloud to her near her tenth birthday in his piece "The Great Salt Gift of Alistair MacLeod's "The Boat.""<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/stories-we-love-the-great-salt-gift-of-alistair-macleods-the-boat/|title=Stories We Love: The Great Salt Gift of Alistair MacLeod's "The Boat"|work=Fiction Writers Review|access-date=2018-10-12}}</ref>

The English literary critic, [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]], on the other hand, criticized what he saw as "a certain simplicity, even [[sentimentality|sentimentalism]]" in many of the stories in ''Island''. He also found some of them overly [[melodrama]]tic adding: "Several of MacLeod's stories have a quality of emotional genre-painting, and display a willingness to let the complexities of character die into [[stereotype]]. The men are white-haired and silent, the women dark-haired with sharp tongues." Although Wood conceded MacLeod's status as a writer, he pointed to certain flaws. "MacLeod is a distinguished writer, but his strengths are inseparable from his weaknesses: the sincerity that produces his sentimentality also stirs his work to a beautifully aroused plainness." Wood singles out one story, "The Tuning of Perfection", however, for its "complete lack of sentimentality." He writes that by delicately retrieving the past, MacLeod achieves a fineness removed from much contemporary North American fiction. He concludes that in this story, MacLeod "becomes only himself, provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jul/07/fiction.reviews|title=The isle is full of noises|author=James Wood|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=2014-04-21}}</ref>

===Novel===
MacLeod's 1999 novel, ''No Great Mischief'' tells the story of the red-haired and dark-eyed MacDonald clan from 1779 when they left Scotland to settle in Cape Breton to more recent times. The judges, who awarded MacLeod the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2001, described the novel as "a story of families, and of the ties that bind us to them. It is also a story of exile and of the ties that bind us, generations later, to the land from which our ancestors came." They went on to predict that the quality of MacLeod's writing would soon make his name a household word. "The music of the Cape Breton rings throughout this book, by turns joyful and sad but always haunting. Written in a hypnotic, stately prose where every word is perfectly placed, 'No Great Mischief' has the same haunting effect, and shows why the master craftsman took more than ten years to write it."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/nominees/no-great-mischief/|title=2001 &ndash; No Great Mischief|publisher=International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award|access-date=2014-04-23|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150405153343/http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/nominees/no-great-mischief/|archive-date=2015-04-05}}</ref>

[[Image:MacLeod reads from his work.jpg|left|thumb|350px|MacLeod reads from his work]]

Those observations were echoed by many reviewers. In ''[[The New York Times]]'', for example, [[Thomas Mallon]] praised the book's lyricism and reported that  "MacLeod's world of Cape Breton &ndash; with its Scottish fishermen and their displaced heirs, the miners and young professionals it has mournfully sent to the rest of the nation &ndash; has become a permanent part of my own inner library." Mallon's main criticism was that parts of the novel came across as heavy handed, lacking the deftness of MacLeod's short fiction. He ended, however, by noting that MacLeod's entire body of work would soon be published in the U.S. granting American readers "a new land that their imaginations can seize like a [[manifest destiny]]."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/25/reviews/000625.25mallont.html|title=The Clan|author=Thomas Mallon|publisher=The New York Times online|access-date=2014-04-23}}</ref>

In the British newspaper, ''The Observer'', [[Stephanie Merritt]] pointed out that when it was first published, ''No Great Mischief'' drew "unqualified praise" from the critics. Her review of the paperback edition concluded: "In its poetic and emotional range, this is one of the richest novels of recent years."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jun/03/features.review|title=No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod|author=Stephanie Merritt|newspaper=The Observer|access-date=2014-04-23}}</ref>

The ''Globe and Mail's'' critic [[Kenneth J. Harvey]] heaped praise on both the book and its author: "The book has it all: beauty,
tragedy, grittiness, humour, darkness, love, music, raunchiness, poetry and a glut of fully drawn, extraordinary characters whose words and deeds and circumstances compel the reader to laugh and blush and weep and swell with bighearted pride...MacLeod is MacLeod, the greatest living Canadian writer and one of the most distinguished writers in the world. No Great Mischief is the book of the year &ndash; and of this decade. It is a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece."<ref>Kenneth J. Harvey. "Magical mischief Alistair MacLeod's long-anticipated first novel is a moving
family epic, a love song to Cape Breton Island, and well worth the wait." ''The Globe and Mail'', October 2, 1999, p.D20.</ref>