Light Lifting: Two Atlantic Book Award Nominations // L.A. Times Review

We're a bit behind here, but on March 22nd it was announced that Alexander Macleod's Light Lifting was short-listed for two Atlantic Book Awards: the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award; and the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Winners will be announced May 19th.

Light Lifting was also reviewed yesterday in the L.A. Times, it's first major U.S. review:

Every so often a new writer comes along with a true gift for language — not necessarily heavy with metaphor or profound imagery but has an elegant, conversational simplicity. It takes a certain clarity of mind not to burden sentences, and Alexander MacLeod has it in the story collection "Light Lifting." For example: "I ate my lunch with Tom every day and every day it was the same thing." "The sun just kept streaming down on us, all bright and summery. It wasn't right and I kept wishing for it to be darker so I didn't have to see it all so clearly." The stories veer toward darkness — he explores two world-class runners and the insidious nature of competition; the trauma of peer pressure; the terrors of young parents, the proud sorrow of single mothers and the embarrassment of their children. MacLeod's graceful writing lends these and other scenarios a humanity, a community of hardship and survival. In this way they move forward; the characters move forward; life goes on.