No Great Mischief

From the LOCH A TUATH NEWS June 2001

I was recently asked to review Alistair MacLeod's book No Great Mischief for a programme Eolas are making about its author. Alistair MacLeod is Professor of English at the University of Windsor, Ontario, and it is a measure of the impact of his novel that it has just won the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award.

Although a Canadian national, MacLeod's roots are in Eigg. Not surprisingly, the novel is centred around the theme of emigration, and is a saga of several generations of a MacDonald family who emigrated from the Highlands to Canada in the eighteenth century. Quite apart from the captivating style of the prose, there were two aspects of the book which struck me.

The first was MacLeod's ability to capture feelings in words, particularly the feelings of those who emigrated to the new world. It is one thing to read of emigrants leaving Scotland -- to read historical accounts of those who boarded the Metagama or the Marnoch -- but it is quite another to enter into the emotional upheaval in the personal lives of those who traded one life for another.

Yet feelings there certainly were. I recall speaking on one occasion to an American lady whose family had emigrated from Lewis two generations back. She said that for those who remained behind, emigration was like having a death in the family. It is easy for us, in our internet world of instant global communication, to forget what that must have been like.

But it is not easy to capture feelings in words, and there are some feelings that defy such domestication. I have always regarded it as one of the primary functions of a minister to work hard at finding words that will capture what people are feeling. Jesus was, after all the enfleshed Word, one in whom communication and affection combined. Public prayer, public preaching, personal ministry must all seek to capture feelings and convey them in language. After twelve years of ministry, I am still trying to do so.

The second aspect of MacLeod's book which struck me was our need to know our roots. The story of the MacDonald family is told through the eyes of a modern descendant of the emigrants, living and working in Canada. Legends of the past and tales of his forebears combine to give him a sense of his place in the world.

We may not all be interested in local history, or in our own family tree. Indeed, one of the ironies of this modern world is that we can send e-mails to Australia, yet not know our own cousins. Yet there is a yearning in us all to know our roots. After all, the bloodstream in our veins carries in it a heady mix of memories and dreams, which link us back to our origins, to our first loves, to the tastes and desires of a world all but forgotten.

Which is why our children may move far from their roots, culturally, socially and even spiritually, but deep down there will always be the call of home. That call links both us and them to our origins, and ultimately to our Creator. God alone can fill the deepest yearning; and although we cannot re-shape our past, we can look at our children and help to shape their future. As someone put it, "like it or not, we all dance to the tunes we know."