Island Colour Illustration The new word is spreading

The new word is spreading across the country

Every day is the same for Rhiannon

But when Newell brings the hat to school

of finding new homes and mending old ones

Island Colour Illustration The new word is spreadingJoyce Carol Oates gives us a precise image of the experience of reading these stories: "that sudden feeling of insecurity that comes to a traveler in unmapped country; a sense of immediacy, cinematic in its vividness." The seventeen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years. A book besotted