No Great Mischief
   Alistair MacLeod
   Associate Writer/Reviewer-Carolyn Stearns
  2000 W. W. Norton & Co. NY USA
   ISBN: 0393049701


In 1779, Calum MacDonald, exiled from the his beloved Scottish Highlands, sets sail for Canada with his wife & twelve children, along with the family dog who swims after the departing boat.

Their dog who “cares a lot, but tries too hard” is the prototypical theme repeated throughout No Great Mischief. Before he arrives in the New World, Calum MacDonald has become a grandfather & widower.

That is one story told in No Great Mischief. The second & predominant story is about Alexander MacDonald, a descendent of Calum MacDonald (Chalum Ruadh).

In chapter one, we learn Alexander is an orthodontic surgeon, spending his days looking into the mouths of his patients. He tells his stories artfully, yet in an unimpassioned voice. Perhaps his choice in dentistry is a safety net - perhaps a metaphor. I found it hard to become emotionally involved in a character so distant from the drama around him. He doesn't become close to any of his brothers until they work together in the Canadian uranium mines when he grew a great love & loyalty toward his three older brothers who, after their parents' death, were left to forage in the woods without schooling or adult guidance.

Alexander & his twin sister, too young to remember the death of their parents & another brother under the ice off the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, are raised by their grandparents. We never learn much about Catherine, other than a beautiful story about when she returned to Scotland which becomes her one shining moment.

The other character that was fascinating was Grandfather (not to be confused with Grandpa). Grandfather was the “historian” he remembered the legends, the songs & the meanings.

While No Great Mischief is listed under fiction, it reads like a memoir which comes particularly alive when Calum is center stage. I found Calum to be the more compelling & complex person & I can only hope Alistair MacLeod writes more about him. This time including an appendix of the music, legends & Gaelic expressions that have been preserved by oral tradition in Nova Scotia.

MacLeod is a fastidious writer. I felt as if he wrote & rewrote No Great Mischief, sentence by sentence. It is a novel where each word is a jewel, each phrase a gift, each sentence a story. When an author is this particular, constantly refining the smaller picture, he sometimes loses touch with the bigger one.

Alistair MacLeod was raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has written two volumes of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift Of Blood, 1976 & As Birds Bring Forth The Sun, 1986. I say he is one of Canada's greatest treasures. He taught creative writing at the University of Indiana & is currently a professor of English at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

Rebecca measures her appreciation of books with teapots. I follow her example & give this novel 3 teapots although I have my own rating system with hankies, based on how often I cried. No Great Mischief is a 3 hankie read.
(04/29/01)

Carolyn Stearns
2001©Carolyn Stearns
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Staff Writer/Reviewer

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Reviewer's Bio:
Carolyn Stearns is a professional modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, masseuse, hypnotist & writer who began her 39 year dance career as a butterfly in first grade. She received an MS in dance from Smith College & studied with modern dance legends Martha Graham, Hanya Holm & Jose Limon.

As Carolyn Coles, she performed with prominent dance companies including Karamu Dancers & the Jose Limon Dance Company in Philadelphia, taught dance at Smith, Swarthmore & Connecticut Colleges & the University of Maryland. For years she was a dance critic for Choice Magazine.

After she retired from dance, she taught her own bodywork program Stretch and Meditation, gave psychic body readings & grief massages -- out of which came her six Blessing Tree Self-Empowerment audio tapes.

Then she began to write, publishing: Spirit-Walking; Where Did All The Water Go?; Queit Please-Eaglets Growing; The Inheritance. Excerpts of her work have appeared in Reality Change, Fodderwing, The Washington Post, Pilgrimage, The New Bay Times, Chesapeake, earthlight! and Choice Magazine.

She live in Mason's Beach, Maryland & at Weslemkoon Lake, Ontario with her husband, Chris, & her special teachers: a Great Pyrenees dog Jean-Luc & cats Black Angus & Calico Phoebe. They share six children & six grandchildren.

A RebeccasReads author in Authors & Books