SOURCE: Creelman, David. “‘Hoping to Strike Some Sort of Solidity’: The Shifting Fictions of Alistair MacLeod.” Studies in Canadian Literature 24, no. 2 (1999): 79-99.

In the following essay, Creelman contrasts the style and themes of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood with As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, examining the ideological basis of each collection.

In the last thirty years, short story writers from the Maritimes have been winning increasingly wide recognition for their work. Collections of short fiction by Elizabeth Brewster, Carol Bruneau, Sheldon Currie, Leo McKay, Alden Nowlan, David Adams Richards, and Budge Wilson—to name just a few—have received enthusiastic reviews and in some cases national recognition.¹ But perhaps one of the best known and most carefully scrutinized writers of short fiction in the Maritimes is Alistair MacLeod. MacLeod's solid reputation is clearly not due to profuseness. Through the seventies and early eighties...