This Side of Brightness - Softcover

McCann, Colum

3.86

3,821 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805054537 ISBN 13: 9780805054538

Publisher: Owl Books, 1999

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On a bitter winter's day in 1916, deep below the streets of New York, a group of men is working in one of the huge pressurized tunnels that will make up the subway system. Suddenly, a tiny hole appears in the roof of the tunnel and the air rushes in, sucking the men up through the bed of the Hudson, to be suspended on a spume of water high above the river. Almost 90 years later, Treefrog, a homeless man, stumbles through the same corridor, under the twirling flakes of snow, to his makeshift home under the city.

A love story in three generations, this is also about hope and despair and survival.

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Review:

This Side of Brightness weaves historical fact with fictional truth, creating a remarkable tale of death, racism, homelessness--and yes, love--spanning four generations. Two characters dominate Colum McCann's narrative: Treefrog (born Clarence Nathan Walker), a homeless man with a dark and shameful secret, and his grandfather Nathan Walker, a black man who came north in the early years of the century to work as a "sandhog", digging the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. Tunnelling is perhaps the most dangerous occupation a man could have; in the close, dark and dangerous pits far beneath the city streets, differences such as colour or ethnic background cease to matter and Walker soon becomes friends with his crewmates: two Irishmen and an Italian. Then an explosion in one of the tunnels literally blows Walker and three other men up through the earth and into the East River. Walker survives but his best friend Con O'Leary is never found. Leary leaves behind a wife and young daughter whom Walker marries many years later. Walker's tale is told in alternating chapters with Treefrog's, who, like his grandfather, chose a hazardous profession--this one high up in the bright sunlight--as a construction worker building skyscrapers. But madness has brought Treefrog out of the light and back to the tunnels his grandfather helped dig as he scrapes out a meagre existence among the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and petty criminals that make up the homeless community. But the grimness of McCann's tale is leavened by the beauty of his prose and the intimations all through the book that, even on this side of darkness, redemption is possible. Guy Smit

Review:

"Luminescent. Colum McCann has taken the monumental force of the past and created from it a novel of wrenching emotional dimension, a novel resplendent with dignity." --"The Boston Globe""Inside the gritty and perilous lives of the men who dug the tunnels under New York's East River, Irish novelist Colum McCann finds poetry....McCann's prose shines like the waters of the East River on a bright winter day."--"The Philadelphia Inquirer""Disturbingly beautiful...A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak." --"The New York Times Book Review" "Luminescent. Colum McCann has taken the monumental force of the past and created from it a novel of wrenching emotional dimension, a novel resplendent with dignity." -"The Boston Globe" "Inside the gritty and perilous lives of the men who dug the tunnels under New York's East River, Irish novelist Colum McCann finds poetry....McCann's prose shines like the waters of the East River on a bright winter day."-"The Philadelphia Inquirer" "Disturbingly beautiful...A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak." -"The New York Times Book Review" " Luminescent. Colum McCann has taken the monumental force of the past and created from it a novel of wrenching emotional dimension, a novel resplendent with dignity." -- "The Boston Globe" " Inside the gritty and perilous lives of the men who dug the tunnels under New York' s East River, Irish novelist Colum McCann finds poetry....McCann' s prose shines like the waters of the East River on a bright winter day." -- "The Philadelphia Inquirer" " Disturbingly beautiful...A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak." -- "The New York Times Book Review"

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