I just finished To Every Thing There is a Season by Alistair MacLeod. It was on sale last Christmas at Costco and sold as if it was a new novella—at least that’s the impression I had. Turns out it’s a repackaged, republished short story that first appeared in As Birds Bring Forth the Sun, his second short story collection put out in 1986. And it’s not even that great a story! It’s well written, but there’s just nothing special about it—nothing that warrants a new special edition published in hard cover and puffed up with ho-hum illustrations.
In short, there is a family in Cape Breton waiting for their son to return for a Christmas visit (he works on the lake boats in Ontario). Son returns, they all go to church, then the family open presents and that’s pretty much it. (Okay, so in the background is the issue of the quickly aging parents, and the second oldest son gets invited to open presents with the adult family members on Christmas Eve, thus rewarding his maturity while marking another moment in the end of his childhood—but that’s pretty much it.) Again, I’m not so much critiquing the story as its promotion as “a classic Christmas story, for readers nine to ninety-nine.” You want to make a special edition of one of his stories, use “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun,” or “The Boat,” or “The Closing Down of Summer.”
I don’t imagine the idea was his. I mean, brother won the IMPAC a few years ago; I don’t think he’s strapped for cash. This was someone else’s bad idea.
Comments
How many DVDs are there for each movie I wonder?
Double-dipping seems to force collectors to shamelessly drop cash for the same thing many times, just because this edition has an extra second of breast!
Silly people.
Nice balls, by the way--using your real name and all. I smell a feud.