Similarly, Lily Duggan's attempts to survive in America are layered with turmoil and significance, but her ancestors' lives less so, despite their own helpings of joy and despair.īut while the stakes swing, McCann never lets go of the reader's attention. McCann writes, "The poor were so thin and white, they were almost lunar." Whereas Mitchell's tos and fros read a bit like "The Dirge of the First-Class Business Traveler."
Douglass' inner struggles, as he encounters Ireland's famine victims, are deep and clear. McCann makes the pilots' flight a gripping adventure. Unfortunately, the chapters themselves vary in substance. The first three are based on real history: McCann vibrantly re-creates the Atlantic crossings of the pilots, abolitionist and senator - each man, in his business, attempting to defy impossible odds.Ĭolum McCann's last book was Let the Great World Spin. TransAtlantic operates with less design, more instinct. His previous book, Let the Great World Spin, won the National Book Award in 2009 after making New York City come alive through two events: the real-life accomplishments of Philippe Petit, who famously walked across a tightrope strung between the Twin Towers' rooftops, and a fictional trial of a prostitute. McCann is a master of the braided novel, where past and present intertwine with multiple protagonists. Then along comes Colum McCann, who tosses them into a book, adds a bunch of fiction, and suddenly Douglass, Mitchell, Alcock and Brown are flesh of the same body, telling us a story. Mitchell, the former senator from Maine, repeatedly crisscrossed the ocean - New York, Belfast, New York, Belfast - to steer the Northern Ireland peace process on behalf of President Clinton.Īll three events are part of the historical record but don't have much in common otherwise - a continent, an island, an ocean. About 75 years later, two airmen, Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown, performed the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, flying 16 hours from Newfoundland to land in an Irish bog.
In 1845, Frederick Douglass sailed to Ireland on a speaking tour to raise money for the abolitionist cause back home. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title TransAtlantic Author Colum McCann
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