This is the final story in the single volume of Alistair MacLeod's collected stories, Island (if you're discovering this project after it's complete, you will be able to find the schedule for this reading project here). After spending a little more than a year with Alistair MacLeod’s short stories,
If a title story could talk, I’m sure it would ask for understanding; it must feel the pressure of both encapsulating the spirit and intent of the entire collection, as though any single story could have also borne that title, and simultaneously revealing some profound concept that is not
Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I've titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other
Last time, there was talk of Bevann Fox’s novel Genocidal Love (2020), Isaac Murdoch’s The Trail of Nenaboozhoo and Other Creation Stories (illustrated by Christi Belcourt, 2019), David Bouchard’s and Roy Henry Vickers’ The Elders Are Watching (2003), and Kazim Ali’s Northern Light: Power, Land, and Memory of Water
Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I've titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other
