A Stone Motherfucker of a Book

When we move into a second printing for Light Lifting, we know what we're going to put on the front cover. Forget Robert Wiersma's Pure Literary Transcendence. I prefer his unedited enthusiasm over at Beattie's Shakespherian Rag. "It really is a stone motherfucker of a book. It blew me away."

Over at That Shakespherian Rag Steven offers his own take on Light Lifting:

Sometimes a debut collection appears that’s so assured, so confident, so poised that it’s hard to believe it’s the author’s first time out of the gate. This was true of Rebecca Rosenblum’s 2008 debut, Once, and it also applies to Alexander MacLeod’s newly Giller-longlisted collection Light Lifting. (Like Rosenblum’s book, Light Lifting is published by Biblioasis, a press which seems to have some kind of alchemical formula for discovering talent in the short fiction arena.)
Not that MacLeod’s book appeared fully formed as if out of Zeus’s head. The author published his first story when he was 21 years old. He’s now on the cusp of 40, so the seven stories in his collection have clearly been percolating for quite some time. Such patience and dedication is apparent on every page of MacLeod’s staggering debut, which collects a group of tough-minded urban tales about people at defining moments in their lives – moments that often involve a recourse to violence or harm.
Each story is a small stylistic marvel. “Adult Beginner I” features a potent, vertiginous scene – one of the most visceral in recent memory – of a swimmer attempting a daredevil dive off a hotel roof into the Detroit River. “Wonder About Parents” employs staccato, declarative sentences to trace the trajectory of a relationship through the prism of a head lice infestation at an elementary school. The title story, about the macho dynamics of a bricklaying crew, opens with a scalding description of a sunburn: “You could see it right through his shirt. Like grease coming through waxed paper. Wet and thick like that, sticking to him. Purple.”

Full review here.

And MacLeod bunkmate A.J. Somerset has this to offer over at his Banjaxed.

Alexander MacLeod’s debut collection of short fiction, drawn from 15 years of writing for literary magazines in Canada, tempts you to indulge in the kind of superlatives that might be counterproductive in the age of hype; just how brilliant can it really be? Well, pretty damn brilliant, actually. Among the seven longish stories that make up this collection, there is not a single misstep. This book is that good.
These stories lead in one direction, dart down a side alley, and then return to themselves, without any bad welds or weak seams to give away their construction. “Number Three” erects the Chrysler minivan as a mythic object, while exploring the consequences of a devastating accident; “Adult Beginner I” finds teenaged lifeguards diving into the Detroit River from the roof of the Holiday Inn, as a swimmer goes out of her depth; and “Wonder About Parents” encapsulates, in staccato prose, the strange intimacies of parenthood. “Good Boys,” an apparently simple story about four brothers and the kid across the street, manages to be both funny and moving while avoiding any form of predictability.
Read it. Oh, yes. Read it.

That, pretty much, is his full review. So just visit AJ's blog by chicking over the right. And pick up his Combat Camera as well. It also is a Stone Mutherfucker.

I just like saying that.