Animal Person

The eight stories in Alexander MacLeod’s excellent second collection, composed in crystalline prose, glimmer and gleam with yearning and loss, as strange longings overwhelm his finely-drawn characters. – Eithne Farry * Daily Mail *
Exquisite. * New York Times *
Mesmerising… MacLeod…explore[s] the absurdities and dislocations of twenty-first-century life. – James Moran * Tablet *
Brilliantly unsettling. – Alison Kelly * Times Literary Supplement *
A five-star book. I loved it. Eight short stories, each one satisfying and complete… They all have a kind of yearning, a voice that is intimate, often troubled, but each shines a light on relationships good and bad. – Claire Fuller
MacLeod’s stories seemed startlingly strange, until I realised they were about my own life. A book full of truth, sadness and mercy. – Clare Pollard
Alexander MacLeod’s control of cadence and rhythm is so complete that it seems effortless. These stories offer a real pleasure which comes from the sense of life and emotional honesty in them… They contain a rare kind of truthfulness. – Colm Toibin (on LIGHT LIFTING)
A thoughtful, beautifully crafted, big-hearted work. – Anne Enright (on LIGHT LIFTING)
Taut to a point of richness, deft in the dark, with an understanding of narrative suspense that’s somehow actually beautiful, Light Lifting is a powerful collection and the debut of a writer clearly a master of the form. – Ali Smith (on LIGHT LIFTING)
Brilliant…engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying: each story has the weight of a novel. * Economist (on LIGHT LIFTING) *

Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton in Canada. His first collection, Light Lifting, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won an Atlantic Book Award. In 2019, he won an O Henry Prize for his short story, ‘Lagomorph’, originally published in Granta, and the first story in Animal Person. MacLeod lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

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