Canadian Achin’
2:59 p.m. ET
(1859 GMT) May 17, 2000

By Tracey Middlekauff

Alistair MacLeod’s first novel, No Great Mischief (W. W. Norton, $23.95, 288 pages), demonstrates that some things are worth the wait.

W. W. Norton

At 63, some might suggest that MacLeod is a bit long
in the tooth for a debut, but he isn’t a stranger to
the literary scene. MacLeod, an English professor at
the University of Windsor, is in fact widely respected
for his other published works, two collections of
short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and As
Birds Bring Forth the Sun.

The wisdom and perspective that MacLeod’s age confers
upon him are abundantly evident, and serve him well
in No Great Mischief. The novel is as far removed from the
all-too-familiar, wearily ironic, jump-cutting hip style as it could
possibly be. Instead,
MacLeod is not afraid to let his story — which consists
largely of memories — unfold slowly and painstakingly
within an intricately constructed narrative.

The novel centers around the lives of the MacDonald
family, clann Chalum Ruadh — or family of the
red Calum. The story is told through the eyes of
Alexander MacDonald, a middle-aged orthodontist whose
profession has taken him far from his past.
MacDonald’s family history, and hence his

history, dates back to 1779 when his great-great-great
grandfather Calum moved his family from the Scottish
Highlands to settle in Cape Breton.

The story’s present is set in the mid-1980s as
Alexander visits his eldest brother Calum, an
alcoholic living in a Toronto rooming house. But even
as the story continually returns to the present for
grounding, much of what takes place occurs in
Alexander’s memory — both his direct memory and the
collective memory of his family.

He relates how he, his twin sister and his older
brothers were orphaned when their parents disappeared
into the ice while crossing a frozen lake. Although he
was too young to remember the events himself, the
story lives in the memories of his brothers and his
grandparents, with whom he lived after his parents’
death. The memories of his family therefore live in
Alexander.

The shared ancestral history of the clann Chalum
Ruadh also plays a large part in the novel. Family
members continually discuss old battles fought by the
Highlanders — Culloden, Killiecrankie, the Plains of
Abraham — as if they had been fought yesterday. These
battles become as personal as the death of an
immediate family member. Past and present become
almost indistinguishable in terms of importance, so
much so that references to modern events are
jarring, such as when Alexander mentions that Ronald Reagan is
the U.S. president. Members of clan MacDonald
also share folk songs, phrases, oft-repeated
sayings — “My faith is constant in you, Clan
MacDonald” — and of course the Gaelic language.

Although No Great Mischief is in part about honoring
the connections of blood and a shared history, its
message isn’t divisive. One main plot strand deals
with a time when Alexander, fresh out of college,
worked with his brothers in the Canadian uranium
mines. Much distrust existed between the Scotch
Canadians and the French Canadians, but at one point,
when Alexander is trying to learn French while
teaching others English, he notes, ” … [We were]
impressed and surprised by how similar many of our
words were although our accents were different. It
seemed, at times, as if Marcel Gingras and I had been
inhabitants of different rooms in the same large house
for a long, long time.”

Death and loss permeate the narrative, but so does
life, especially the life that is given to the dead by
always remembering, and by telling — and retelling —
every story.

Tracey Middlekauff is a free-lance writer living in Brooklyn