Island: The Complete Stories

Island: The Complete Stories (2000) contains every story Canadian author Alistair MacLeod published in his two previous collections—The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories—along with two new stories that were previously unpublished. TheGuardian calls Island "provokingly singular and rare, an island of richness."

In the first story, "The Boat," a professor reflects on his youth and upbringing on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. His mother is strong, stoic, and fearless, while his father, who is a fisherman, is quiet and diligent. The narrator’s sisters all eventually marry and leave home, and the narrator himself entertains leaving home for studies. As his father ages, however, he determines to give up his books and go into the family business of fishing. His father protests, so the narrator makes a pact with his father: He will remain on the island and help the family business for as long as his father is alive. One day, father and son are caught in a winter storm, and the father gets swept away. The father’s bloated body washes up in late November, and the narrator’s mother receives a meager pension on which to live. The young man soon leaves home for good, though the fact that he left his mother behind still ails him as much as his father’s gruesome death at sea. 

A man uproots his family from a coal-mining camp in rural Kentucky to move to Indiana, where there are more job opportunities in "The Golden Gift of Grey." Although they view the relocation as necessary, the mother and father are pained to see their children lose their connection to their ancestral home in Kentucky. Their teenage son, Jesse, rebels against parental authority, skipping class to gamble in a local pool hall. Guilty over going against his parents' wishes, Jesse gives the 31 dollars he won at the pool hall to his parents, thinking this will make up for his transgression. On the contrary, his parents, mortified by Jesse's lack of morals, order him to return the money. Jesse schemes a way to keep the money without lying to his parents, feeling immensely proud of having discovered how to thrive within life's moral grey areas.

In "In the Fall," an impoverished mining family debates what to do with their old pit horse. Desperately in need of money, the mother tries to convince the father to sell the horse to a knacker, who disposes of old or unwanted animals, harvesting whatever he can from them. The father refuses because he possesses a deep bond with the horse who helped him for years when he worked in the mines. He recalls one night when the horse waited for hours in the freezing cold night rather than abandon his master. Both parents are steadfast. The son, meanwhile, plots to free the horse should his mother get her way. In the end, the father relents. But when they try to give the horse to the knacker, the horse refuses to follow. The father is forced to lead his beloved horse to the slaughter himself.

In "The Road to Rankin's Point," 26-year-old Calum tries to convince his ninety-six-year-old grandmother to move from her isolated farm that has fallen into disrepair. All her neighbors have long moved away from Rankin's Point, but the grandmother stubbornly refuses to leave. She fears that if she allows her grandchildren to take control of her estate, they will send her to a nursing home. She also feels strongly connected to Gaelic history, particularly a violin hanging on her wall that came from her ancestors in the Scottish old country. While Calum is tasked by the rest of the family to convince his grandmother to abandon her homestead, his heart is not into the task. Calum himself is dying of leukemia and can, therefore, appreciate a person's desire to die on her own terms. The morning after describing her ancestors' ability to predict their own deaths, the grandmother dies having outlived her husband, siblings, and three children.

In "The Tuning of Perfection," 78-year-old Archibald lives atop a mountain in Cape Breton singing old Gaelic songs. Word of Archibald's singing prowess reaches a group of folklorists in Toronto who travel to Cape Breton to make recordings of Archibald's songs. These recordings attract the interest of a television company in Halifax that wants to feature a group of old-style Gaelic singers from Cape Breton during a performance for the royal family. Although Archibald and his family are in the running, another clan led by a scheming man named Carver vies to win the television contract. During auditions, the stubborn Archibald refuses to shorten the traditional songs to three minutes or less, allowing Carver and his family of inferior singers to win the contract. Grateful for Archibald's stubbornness, Carver gives him cases of bootleg liquor despite the fact that Archibald is known across Cape Breton as a man who never indulges in drink or other vices. As Archibald watches Carver and his clan celebrate in drunken revelry, he concludes that despite their inferior singing, these men embody the true spirit of Scottish heroism.

Other stories of note featured in Island include "The Vastness of the Dark," "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood," and "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun."