Yet if any writer deserves to appeal to a wide audience, MacLeod does. In thirty years he has produced two volumes of short stories (these, together with two uncollected stories, make up this new book, Island) and one novel, a slender body of work that has only recently begun to attract a wider readership. MacLeod needs McGahern to introduce him because, unlike McGahern, he was, until recently, still a writer with a small, loyal following at home, rather than an international reputation. In addition, both McLeod’s voice and McGahern’s are recognisably inflected, in certain patterned stresses, by a common Gaelic linguistic inheritance. Alistair MacLeod is a Canadian of Scottish descent, and, like John McGahern who has written a foreword to his collected stories, an astute observer of a very specific local setting – Cape Breton, Nova Scotia of its landscape and industry, its closed communities, quotidian tragedies and domestic disappointments.
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