Afbeelding auteur

D. R. MacDonald

Auteur van Cape Breton Road

7 Werken 248 Leden 7 Besprekingen Favoriet van 1 leden

Over de Auteur

D. R. MacDonald teaches at Stanford University.

Bevat de naam: D.R. MacDonald

Werken van D. R. MacDonald

Cape Breton Road (2000) 144 exemplaren
Anna From Away (2012) 27 exemplaren
Lauchlin of the Bad Heart (2007) 26 exemplaren
All the Men Are Sleeping: Stories (2002) 20 exemplaren
Eyestone (1987) 16 exemplaren
The Ice Bridge: A Novel (2013) 14 exemplaren
Succession (2001) 1 exemplaar

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A family mourns the death of a wayward, but kind, brother - each in their own way, in Holy Annie. A son tries to connect with his dying father in Sailing. In The Flowers of Bermuda a man mourns both his son who dies too young and his friend, a reverend, who has died following a robbery in Scotland.

The stories take place in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a place of farming and fishing and where the people are influenced by their Gaelic ancestors. They're not all about death, but the possibility lurks. These are thoughtful stories with depth that lingers beyond the page.… (meer)
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1 stem
Gemarkeerd
Hagelstein | 1 andere bespreking | Jun 13, 2020 |
A friend recently asked me what book I had on my shelves that had been there unread the longest. As I went hunting to find out, (Henry James' Wings of the Dove, incidentally), I came across this Pushcart Prize winning collection. Published in 1988, I have owned it for almost as long. And so with a promise to James that I would come back to him, I pulled this one off the shelf, curious to see what had intrigued my high school self to buy it and yet never to read it. I can't begin to guess what it was that drew me to it so many years ago, especially since short stories have never been my favorites. In this case, though, the short story is the perfect form, offering just enough and yet not so much pervading sadness and despair to overwhelm the reader.

All of the stories are set in the rugged and rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, an area populated by the descendants of the Scots, overlaid with the soft sounds of Gaelic and the muted plaids of kilts. Each of the stories in the collection offers a spare sense of place and feels washed in sepia tones, capturing the aging population, fading culture, and the economic depression of the time and place. There is a mournful nostalgia, a harkening back to the past, and a sense of life having long since passed by both the place and the people. The main characters are mostly aging protagonists, an old woman drinking alone in memory of her newly deceased brother, an artist whose wife has left him living cheek by jowl with an elderly widow he wants to evict, a laborer saying goodbye to his lifelong working and drinking buddy who has had a stroke, a fisherman shocked by the sudden, violent death of the local minister killed while on vacation in the old country, a nephew taking his elderly uncle back to the old homestead only to discover it has been vandalized, a brother lamenting his tough older brother's life, an uncle who presents his nephew with the symbol of uselessness, despair, and futility embodied in a Chinese rifle from the Korean War and then in the twilight of his life gets the rifle back, an old handyman checking in on a blind widow living alone and isolated, and an old sailor easing into death as his son remembers his father's tales. Woven throughout the whole collection is a fading, a melting into the gloaming. The landscape is vast but the lives left to the people in these stories are small and drifting towards their finish. A slight book, this must be read slowly and deliberately, just as the stories seem to have been written.
… (meer)
1 stem
Gemarkeerd
whitreidtan | 1 andere bespreking | Mar 4, 2014 |
I was totally enraptured by this novel about a 19-year-old boy ousted from the U.S. for stealing cars, and sent back to the place of his birth, Cape Breton Island, Canada. I was enraptured, that is, until the end when everything fell apart. It was an interesting tale about Innis, who just wanted to raise a small crop of weed in the woods and then make enough money from the sale of that weed to enable him to escape the confines of the island. Of course, along the way, he meets some wonderful characters, who teach him the value of the old-time ways. The end just didn't feel right to me, with Innis taking a giant leap backwards after all the believable little steps he had taken forward.… (meer)
 
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hayduke | 2 andere besprekingen | Apr 3, 2013 |
This is a remarkable and unforgettable story. Although I am not a boxing fan, Lauchlin's aborted boxing career is integral to the story and fascinating in itself as he occasionally reminisces about what might have been. Lauchlin's fascination with and burgeoning friendship with a beautiful blind woman, wife of a friend and neighbour, rings absolutely true. The author puts you right inside the mind of Lauchlin, with all his human failings but basic decentness, even in his troubled love life. His unintended involvement in an unfolding tragedy makes this a page turner. The landscape and life in Cape Breton comes alive as well. Don't let the boxing turn you off - this book is excellent, one of the best I have read this year.… (meer)
 
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Scrabblenut | 1 andere bespreking | Mar 1, 2008 |

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Statistieken

Werken
7
Leden
248
Populariteit
#92,014
Waardering
½ 3.3
Besprekingen
7
ISBNs
35
Talen
1
Favoriet
1

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