The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change.
His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod’s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.
“Alistair MacLeod’s stories are as regional and universal as the work of Faulkner or Chekhov. And they are, I think, as permanent.” —Michael Ondaatje
“His writing moved from his heart to the page, and will always leap back from the page and into the heart of the reader.” —Jane Urquhart
“MacLeod published but one novel, No Great Mischief, and two short story collections, yet he was a giant of contemporary Canadian literature, a fact proven by the outpouring of grief, from coast to coast and around the world, in the wake of his death.” —National Post
“A consummate storyteller, MacLeod's great gift allowed him to touch readers worldwide with moving stories of the everyday lives of people that resonated with the warmth and the sadness of a universal humanity.” —Halifax Chronicle-Herald
The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change.
His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod’s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.
Praise
“Alistair MacLeod’s stories are as regional and universal as the work of Faulkner or Chekhov. And they are, I think, as permanent.” —Michael Ondaatje
“His writing moved from his heart to the page, and will always leap back from the page and into the heart of the reader.” —Jane Urquhart
“MacLeod published but one novel, No Great Mischief, and two short story collections, yet he was a giant of contemporary Canadian literature, a fact proven by the outpouring of grief, from coast to coast and around the world, in the wake of his death.” —National Post
“A consummate storyteller, MacLeod's great gift allowed him to touch readers worldwide with moving stories of the everyday lives of people that resonated with the warmth and the sadness of a universal humanity.” —Halifax Chronicle-Herald
