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Title |
No Great Mischief
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Author |
Alistair MacLeod |
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Details |
Paperback. Vintage Intl
Ed. 304 pages (Except Canada) |
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ISBN |
0375726659 (0771055706 in
Canada) |
Comment.
Quite simply one of the most beautifully written novels I
have read in the last 10 years.
Review:
For the MacDonalds, the past is not a
foreign country. This Cape Breton clan may have lived in the New
World since 1779, when Calum Ruadh ("the red Calum") and his wife,
12 children, and dog landed. Scotland, however, remains their true
home. So profound is their connection to their lost land that on
brief visits they find themselves welcomed by strangers. When one
descendent tells a Scotswoman that she's from Canada, she is offered
a gentle rejoinder: "That may be.... But you are really from here.
You have just been away for a while." In some ways this is
unsurprising, since the MacDonalds either have deep black hair or
their ancestor's colouring. And those with the latter have "eyes
that were so dark as to be beyond brown and almost in the region of
glowing black. Such individuals would manifest themselves as
strikingly unfamiliar to some, and as eerily familiar to others."
Another sport of nature? Many are fraternal twins, including
Alistair MacLeod's narrator, Alexander, and his sister.
But No Great Mischief is far more than
the straightforward saga of one family over the generations. Instead
the author has created a painfully beautiful myth in which the
long-ago is in many ways more present than modern existence. Even in
the last decades of the 20th century, the MacDonalds fall into
Gaelic--its inflections, rhythms, and song--with deep nostalgia.
This is a family that is used to composing itself in the face of
disaster. They often assure one another, "My hope is constant in
thee," and in the light of their many losses, the clan must cling to
its motto.
No Great Mischief begins with Alexander's visit to Toronto, where
his eldest brother now subsists on a diet of drink and memories. The
narrator, a successful orthodontist, doesn't have much to do with
the former but is unable (or unwilling) to escape the latter. As the
novel proceeds, Alexander fills in his family history, including
such key episodes as his great-great-grandfather's self-exile from
Scotland. Though Calum Ruadh had intended to leave his dog behind,
it broke away and tried to catch up with him. MacLeod piercingly
captures the animal's struggle as her master first tries to make her
head for shore and then--realizing she won't desert him--spurs her
on. Throughout No Great Mischief various people recall this
incident, an emblem of intensity, hope, and dependence. A descendant
of the bitch is also on hand when Alexander's parents and one of his
brothers disappear under the ice on a cold spring night. She
persists in searching for her people and tries to protect their
lighthouse from the new keeper, receiving in return "four bullets
into her loyal waiting heart." When Alexander's grandfather hears of
her death, he uses a phrase that becomes one of the book's litanies,
"It was in those dogs to care too much and to try too hard."
This is a MacDonald characteristic as well. A good deal of No Great
Mischief's strength stems from scenes of longing and despair--for
those who die for a lost cause, whether in 1692 when one leader is
killed ("the redness of his hair dyed forever brighter by the
crimson of his blood") or in an Ontario uranium mine where one
brother is decapitated. MacLeod evokes his clan, and the elemental
beauty of their landscape, in quiet, precise language that gains
power with each repetition. (A sentence such as "All of us are
better when we're loved" comes to acquire a near proverbial ring.)
If he occasionally tips his hand too much, pressing home his point
that present-day prosperity isn't all it's cracked up to be, no
matter. I doubt that this inspired and elegiac novel will ever leave
those who are lucky enough to read it--proving after all the
persistence of the clann Chalum Ruaidh. --Kerry Fried.
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