Novel
No Great Mischief
Alistair MacLeod · 1999
Synopsis
An Ontario orthodontist, Alexander MacDonald, drives to Toronto, where his older brother Calum lives alone in a wretched room and drinks. From this visit rises the whole story of a clan: a Scottish highlander who left the Highlands in 1779, whose wife dies during the crossing, the generations of fishermen, lumberjacks and miners who settled Cape Breton, and the summer of 1968 when the narrator, his studies finished, joined the family crew in a uranium mine at Elliot Lake.
Context
The author spent more than ten years writing this book, the only full-length work in his output, published when he was sixty-three. The title takes up a phrase of General Wolfe about the Scottish Highlanders enrolled in the British army: there would be no great mischief if they fell; the French title comes from the same phrase. The narrative crosses Culloden and the battle of Quebec of 1759, and moves from the present to the eighteenth century.
Who it is for
A novel of interwoven memories, full of cross-references from one generation to the next, in which Gaelic words appear.
Prizes and reception
Trillium Book Award, then the International Dublin Literary Award in 2001, of which the author was the first Canadian winner.
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