You go through life making assumptions. Sometimes you see a name over and over again and between the name and the covers of the books you just assume you will not like a certain author. Perhaps this is serendipity, and the truth is that it is not your time yet to read that author. I don’t know. I know that I have overlooked this writer for many years and that it turns out he is so good he makes me want to read not only many more books by him (which thankfully there are plenty of) but also, return to a focus on Canlit, which I have once or twice gotten pretty deep into (though always without touching Mr. Macleod).
I won’t pretend to get everything in this book, it has a resonance that leaves me sure I am missing a great deal and that it would benefit from multiple readings. Also, it is an older book and I am sure many clear and brilliant things have been written about it. Let me just give you a sampling of why I like it and why I think if you have passed him over but are looking for a writer to enjoy, you should consider No Great Mischief.
My first hint I would like the novel is actually on page two where Macleod writes of a character’s reaction to something, “Sometimes it is hard to choose or not to choose those things which bother us at the most inappropriate times.” I’ve been there! One time I was doing the scripture reading at a fancy church in advent and at the end of the service I was blasted by two men who were beside themselves that I had dared to read with only an unbuttoned dress shirt, not tie! Mon Dieu! Or, to be more personal about it, I can be very judgmental of others, like at the National Orchestra here in Ottawa I will see people staring at their phones during the performance and I will be mentally explaining to them their error and congratulating myself…and yet we are both distracted are we not.
Then there is the theme of coming home, which at times gets nearly biblical. At one point a character is visiting the country her family left for Canada about 4 generations ago and she is instantly recognized. “You are from here said the woman. No, said my sister, I’m from Canada. That may be, said the woman. But you are really from here. You have just been away a while.” That, is the deepest sense of coming home, being recognized as being in the right place after a long time away, even generations away. It’s like an eastern Canada version of the old Augustine line, “for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” People know when they are home, and it is delightful to read a book from home, though I never have lived on the east coast.
Finally, another bit of wisdom tied into the story (to me this book did not feel didactic, just from time to time timeless in its pithy statements): “Still, you can’t have generic parents. You only have two individuals.” Maybe it is due to my background, though I think it is more to do with being into my forties and watching many a marriage collapse upon the shoals of expectations that are unfair and plucked from thin air and having nothing to do with the individual one has married, but that line really struck me. We often have these ideas of the perfect person, or for how a given role should be played (pastor, father, wife, uncle…) but the truth is, at the end of the day, we live with other people, not titles, and the sooner we realize and accept this the sooner we can get on with enjoying life and laughing together.
So, if you haven’t read Macleod yet, I strongly suggest you do.
Leave a Reply