Changes

|title=No Great Mischief

|author=Alistair MacLeod

|publisher=Vintage

|date=August 2011

|website=

|video=

|summary=No Great Mischief is a novel which captures the essence of belonging and the need to be a part of one's history. This is the story of a small part of Clann Calum Ruadh, the people of Red Calum, emigrants to Canada. It sweeps from contemporary Toronto to evoke Cape Breton in the fifties and back to the clearances of Scottish history. MacLeod tells the tale with the dignity and stature of an ancient myth, holding up to our gaze what it means to be a part of a race, a family and a place.

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The ingredients of this tale, eviction and clearances, tragic death, alcoholism and despair of the displaced islander in the modern world sound like the recipe for cliché and melodrama. What MacLeod achieves is akin to classic myth, a tale in which the characters take on an almost monumental scale, where the elders are pillars of wisdom and strength in a world which flings misfortune at them. And yet in spite of their grandeur, these are believable and likeable folk with their weaknesses and foibles.