![]() And two qualities stood out for me above all else: a sense of place that was absolute, and an utterly authentic voice. Then I took the book home and read it again and again, peeling back layers, pouring over the seamless sentences and losing myself within their rhythms. Knowing nothing about its author, I sat, started to read, and happily gave up an entire afternoon of my life to those pages. It was the title, a six-word poem: 'As Birds Bring Forth The Sun', that not only grabbed me but knocked the breath from my body. Though he'd long held an iconic – and in some ways almost mystical – status among Canadian writers, Alastair MacLeod really appeared on the radar for most readers in 2001 when his only novel, 'No Great Mischief', a quietly towering, multi-generational treatise on tradition and family ties, won the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.īy that stage, he was already one of my small obsessions, had been from the day, some time in the early '90s, that I happened across a collection of his short stories while browsing the shelves of Cork City Library. Usually I like to review books based around a summary of their plot, but as the title of this story is called 'Remembrance', I'll offer up some thoughts that feel a little more in keeping. His first new short story in over a decade, Remembrance is a powerful reminder of why Alistair MacLeod is one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. What emerges is an elegant, life-affirming meditation on the bond between fathers and sons, "how the present always comes out of the past," and how even in the midst of tragedy and misfortune there exists the possibility for salvation. As the story unfolds, other generations enter the scene. He remembers how the war devastated his own family, but gave him other reasons to live. He remembers the horrors of life at the frontlines in Ortona, Italy, and then what happened in Holland when the Canadians arrived as liberators. As he waits for the arrival of his son and grandson, he remembers his decision to go to war in desperation to support his young family. ![]() In the early morning hours of November 11, David MacDonald, a veteran of the Second World War, stands outside his Cape Breton home, preparing to attend what will likely be his last Remembrance Day parade. From the internationally celebrated author of No Great Mischief comes a moving short story of three generations of men from a single family whose lives are forever altered by the long shadow of war.
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