Wow. I've just finished reading No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod, and I am impressed. I loved it, and not just because the book opens where I grew up and everything seemed familiar. In fact, even though most of the story is about a family in Cape Breton, MacLeod highlights spots across Canada that I'm familiar with--Calgary, northern Ontario, Squamish, Cape Breton, Quebec--and the book made me wish I had more exposure to the rest of Canada when I was growing up (I grew up in southwestern Ontario, and we heard more about the States than the rest of Canada). I think MacLeod might slam James Wolfe one or two too many times in the book (he quotes Wolfe as saying that if the Highlanders die on the Plains of Abraham, then it's "no great mischief"--admittedly, it does shed a different light on Wolfe's character than that which was taught in high school history), but overall a delightful read. The fact that my wife's grandmother was a McDonald from Nova Scotia (the family in the novel) had nothing to do with it. Honest.