Editing Alistair MacLeod (section)

===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>