| Title | : | This Side of Brightness |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0312421974 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780312421977 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1998 |
| Awards | : | Dublin Literary Award Shortlist (2000) |
This Side of Brightness Reviews
-
It will be difficult to think about the New York City subway system without thinking about this book. I have ridden the subway on occasional trips to NYC and the next time I do I will be definitely be thinking about its history and about these characters, those who built the tunnels and those who lived there. This is an alternating narrative beginning with a man called Treefrog. It’s 1991 and he lives underground in the tunnel with his cat to fend off the rats, off the grid, a self exile caused by his mental state and a awful deed of years before. The second narrative is the story beginning in 1916 of Nathan Walker, a young black man from Georgia who works as a sandhog (: a laborer who works in underwater or underground excavation and construction (such as in the building of tunnels or bridge foundations.) Danger is part of the job for the tunnel workers, known as sandhogs, who work beneath New York's streets - Ian Fisher. Merriam-Webster Dictionary) . While this is a work of fiction the danger was real and a horrific event, based on a real happening, a blowout while men were working on the tunnel is an event in this story that perhaps sets things in motion . What is to come is the complex story telling the fate of the future generations of two of the sandhogs whose lives cross in a beautiful ways in spite of the time when Black men or Irish men or Italian men were only acceptably connected when they worked together sharing the possible danger of their work.
The tunnels are so dark yet are a source of light - how these men from disparate backgrounds connect. Friendships forged and when disaster strikes, the bonds above ground become deep. There is some beauty amid so much sadness and also ugliness - racism, drug addiction, rape. There are tender moments and hurtful moments in this complex gritty, sad and realistic story of a family over three generations. When the two threads are connected - wow! It’s well researched as McCann relates how he studied the past, spent time down in the tunnels where Treefrog lived and how he spoke with sandhogs to get an understanding of what they experienced. McCann is another of my favorite writers who could reorder the words in a phone book and make it wonderful to read. -
#Irish readathon 2024
Há uma campa dentro de todos nós.
Não há sinónimos, jogos de palavras nem metáforas que sirvam para transmitir a escuridão em que esta obra se embrenha, até para mim que raramente me deixo deprimir por um livro, e apesar de o final em aberto poder ser interpretado como a proverbial luz ao fundo do túnel, o meu cinismo não concede essa possibilidade. “Deste lado da luz” é um livro negro, desde a cor da pele das personagens até às caganitas de ratazana, desdobrado em duas linhas temporais em Nova Iorque, a de 1991, protagonizada por Treefrog, um sem-abrigo que vive num túnel de metro desactivado…
No seu ninho escuro, no alto do túnel, Treefrog acendeu uma pequena fogueira com galhos e papel de jornal. Tinha escurecido há muito. Ouvia-se um comboio ao longe. (…) Sentado ali, no seu ninho, no escuro miasmático, Treefrog tocou, transformando o ar, devolvendo aos túneis a sua música original.
…e a de 1916, em que seguimos Walker, um dos trabalhadores-toupeira que o escavou sob o rio East.
No meio da linha, Nathan Walker observa enquanto os homens do turno da noite emergem do túnel, imundos da cabeça aos pés, exaustos. Walker compreende então que está a observar o seu futuro, e por isso não olha de demasiado de perto, mas de vez em quando a sua mão estica-se e encontra o ombro de um dos homens. O homem extenuado levanta a cabeça, saúda-o e segue em frente. (…) Ele sabe que existe democracia debaixo do rio. No escuro o sangue de todos os homens é da mesma cor – um gringo é igual a um negro, igual a um polaco, igual a um irlandês.
Tal como aconteceu com “Apeirogon”, Colum McCann explora temas universais, revelando uma enorme sensibilidade face a problemas que não são pessoalmente seus mas de toda a humanidade. Desta vez, através de personagens marcadas pelo trauma e pelas dependências, debruça-se sobre o racismo…
Na igreja católica na baixa da cidade onde ela costumava ir, havia murmúrios obscuros vindos de pessoas brancas nos bancos da igreja, ainda que Walker nunca a tivesse acompanhado. O padre ficou corado e (…) baniu-a da missa quando Eleanor lhe sugeriu que Jesus era provavelmente muito mais escuro do que era permitido vê-Lo na cruz.
…e a situação dos sem-tecto.
Um homem tosquiado envolto no mais escuro dos casacos, com o forro a abanar para além das suas coxas, parece magro e esculpido por uma terrível degradação humana, as botas de trabalho embrulhadas em fita cola, o chapéu azul enfiado até às orelhas, grãos de poeira nos raios de luz esmagando-o por todos os ângulos, como se a própria luz pudesse não o querer.
“Deste lado da luz” é uma obra muitíssimo bem estruturada (mas não bem traduzida, infelizmente), como duas linhas férreas que correm em paralelo até que, numa subtil mudança de agulha, se tornam uma só.
Revisitou-se a si mesmo, completou o círculo, cada sombra de si próprio conduzindo à seguinte, a qual é apenas uma outra sombra na escuridão da casa das gargalhadas. -
If I come to an author late, I like to go visit the earlier works, to see the progression. That, and I’m a completist. Having loved
Let the Great World Spin and liked
Zoli and
Transatlantic, I wanted to see where Colum McCann came from. Other than, you know, Ireland.
In This Side of Brightness, we see an already competent writer not yet in full confident stride. And there is already a formula, a template: take a relatively obscure historical event or two, connect them with plot lines which take about 300 pages to connect, and sprinkle in some vignettes to lift a social issue, usually racism. That can get tiresome, even when reading an author’s works in reverse order.
Here, McCann uses a device of alternating chapters: one telling the story of a sandhog, an under-river tunnel worker named Nathan Walker, and then a chapter following the exploits of a homeless man nicknamed Treefrog. Back and forth. Early 20th Century and late 20th Century, with the early plot creeping slowly towards the later one. Think the stories might be connected? So, it felt contrived to me.
This worked in Let the Great World Spin because the writing was just so damn good. In This Side of Brightness, the writing was not just so damn good. At times it was wince-able. Even the imagery seemed contrived, bold-faced: a man seeking balance by doing things with each hand or stabbing himself after stabbing another man. Kind of matches the alternating chapters, doesn’t it? It was so much more subtly done in LTGWS.
There’s promise here, like this sentence: There is one Englishman, Cricket, who serves his vowels as if holding them out on a tong. But precious little of that.
In any event, that was then and this is now. McCann is a go-to guy now, an author to be read upon publication and not a year later at a used book store.
_____ _____ _____ _____
One eerie thing: the front cover of my edition of this 1998 book shows the World Trade Center silhouetted in the distance. McCann takes us there again, of course, in Let the Great World Spin. But now the balance is told in shuffled vignettes of impressionistic tones. Which I still remember, not having been sledgehammered over the head with them. A good lesson. -
I was absolutely head over heels in love with this book.......until the last chapter. Definitely this would have gotten five stars if only that last chapter were absent. End it any way but this! That is my sole complaint. Four stars, not five! My heart wants to give this five anyhow.
I am going to give you a quote:
He played so bad. It sounded terrible, man. It was awful, right? But it was beautiful too. And he sang this song, which was a blues song, which didn't go well with no fiddle and it goes: Lord, I am so low down, I think I am looking up at down. We were so happy sitting on the stoop that we went changed the words, and we was singing: Lord, I am so high up I believe I'm looking down at up. Cars go by. We even heard some gun shots far down the street, but we don't pay no mind. Which is one of the things I always do find myself thinking about, looking down at up and looking up at down. I never heard nicer than that. ( chapter 14)
Me too, I never heard nicer than that!
Also in chapter 14 one finds:
It's the little things break your heart.
And the little things that make you so happy too. That is my addition, but I am sure McCann will agree. Why am I sure? Because sometimes the flight of birds or sunlight in patches are loved by his down and out characters too. Small things are central to what makes us happy. This book is about those people who have less than nothing. The homeless poor of NYC during the first half of the 20th Century. You follow one family, through two threads until they finally meet up and you understand who is who and who each of these people really is in 1991. You get depth of character. Now if you cannot or do not care to feel empathy for the lowest of low please pick another book.
All my GR friends know how I shy away from romance and love. THIS book has love and sex. This book is one of those exceptional ones that portray it well. I totally enjoyed chapter 13. Love is portrayed between men and women, between friends, even the love one feels for a pet is here. There is aberrant sexual attraction too. All these different love emotions were wonderfully depicted with depth and insight.
I will read anything by this author. I will be reading every single thing he has written. I have no favorite authors except now
Colum McCann and maybe
Alexandra Fullertoo.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Joe Barrett. His voice, the pitch, the tone, the intonations were absolutely perfect for the story's characters. Both the men and the women.
It will make me very sad if I hear that others do not appreciate this book, so please let me warn away those who want a comforting cute read about ordinary people. Are you strong enough to look honestly at how some people live? And can you have compassion for them? Just read something else if you don't want to do that. I don't want to hear whining and complaints about a book I absolutely love.
************************
In chapter four:
GR ate my message. Second try.... I LOVE how McCann draws a picture, creates people and puts you the reader there in that place which is totally foreign, be it a homeless person's "room" balanced on some beams high up in a tunnel under the Hudson River or in the first NYC subway station created by Alfred Ely Beach. Here are the historical facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pn... But to see this station deep under the ground you have to read the book. There is a fountain, beautiful tiles and frescoes and even a piano! When? In 1870 or the 60s. I feel the ice on the bum's beard. I hear the crunch of snow as he walks. I love McCann's writing!
********************************
After three chapters:
How does this author do it? He puts me in environments completely foreign to me surrounded by people also foreign, and yet I understand the people and feel the place perfectly. And the dialogs, how does he capture the genuine feel of them? This is crazy; I like testing new authors, not reading ones I have read before, except Colum McCann! -
This story opens with the homeless man Treefrog throwing bricks. He has seen a bird, a crane he thinks, that is frozen in the river. Will he set it free and afford it another chance at flight? This, for me, was the essence of the book. Men going underground to dig a tunnel and rising to return to thier homes, sometimes. There is a constant shifting between dark and light, being earthbound and flying, stepping lively with elegant balance on steel beams and parking meters. McCann’s writing is beautiful and brutal. At one point Treefrog passes some mothers pushing strollers. He greets them but they look down and hurry on. He is accused of being smelly and dirty. Do others fear him? We see him as a baby at the start of his life. Later he no longer remembers his name and lives in the tunnel estranged from his wife and daughter. His grandfather dug the tunnel he lives in. So this is a story of the cycles of life. Each character begins with hope and enthusiasm. Later, those still alive, look back and see themselves as they want to be again, renewed in another time and place. Inside them is raw energy that could be transformed again, maybe one more time. Maybe one more time to be freed and fly like the crane.
-
Que suplício! O tempo é demasiado precioso para ser gasto num livro que não nos diz absolutamente nada. Li na diagonal a partir de metade do livro...
Duas histórias, apenas uma moderadamente interessante no início, nenhuma verdadeiramente cativante. -
"Our Resurrections Aren't What They Used To Be"
It was not always so, but recently, I have come to like Colum McCann a lot. His
TransAtlantic came high on my Top Ten of 2013, and
Thirteen Ways of Looking figured equally on my 2015 list. Both books are built in sections: TransAtlantic is about four historical journeys (all eastward but one) between America and Ireland; Thirteen Ways consists of a novella and three stories of different lengths. I sense that McCann is most comfortable with short to medium-length fiction; when these units are combined to make a novel, their success depends on how well the author's large concept can unite them. Some sections of his 2009 National Book Award winner, Let the Great World Spin, those dealing with the 1974 feat of Philippe Petit walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers, were as brilliant as I could possibly imagine, but he lost my interest in the interlocking sections that took us to grimier, more earthbound parts of the city; they provided contrast, certainly, but not wholeness.
These considerations came back to me when reading McCann's earlier novel, This Side of Brightness (1998). This also starts with an extraordinary real-life New York event, in this case a freak accident in 1916 involving workers digging a subway tunnel under the East River—the polar opposite of Petit's sky walk through air and light. McCann is magnificent at describing the work of the "sandhogs" wielding their shovels in the pitch dark, advancing the tunnel by feet and inches. He creates a most sympathatic protagonist in Nathan Walker, an African-American from Georgia, and the Italian and two Irishmen who share his shift. For while racism is common and hateful above ground, the cameraderie of the tunnelers is color-blind. And when the accident occurs (I won't reveal the details), it is a glorious image of a burst from darkness into light, a real-life resurrection. This side of brightness, indeed! And McCann will seed his book with similar images throughout, such as the sandhogs celebrating the tunnel opening by tossing lighted candles to one another in the pitch dark, or a construction worker high on the scaffolding of a skyscraper tossing lighted cigarettes into the dark night.
But this is less than half the book, much less. For the interweaving sections set in the modern era, McCann extends the image of light and darkness to tackle racial issues, between white and black. The bonds that are so strong beneath the water cannot easily be carried into the light of day, but Nathan, changed by his experience, will attempt to do just that. It will be a fine attempt, full of love and courage, but it comes at a price. What that price is, we shall only gradually discover as the two layers of the novel begin to connect up. But meanwhile, we have to endure contasting sections of increasing length involving another character, known (at first) only as "Treefrog," a homeless man who lives in the tunnels under the modern city. McCann conjures up a dystopian existence in squalid detail, again showing his prodigious gifts as an author, but at the expense of taking the reader into a world that is almost physically nauseating. I could stomach the darker sections in Let the Great World Spin and still enjoy the radiance of that tightrope walk, but here the contrast was just too great. It is true that when the two threads connect up McCann writes once more as a poet, and there is a poignant beauty in the ending. But I was struck by the truth of the title of his final chapter, "Our Resurrections Aren't What They Used to Be." McCann will indeed end with another resurrection of a kind, but it will seem tawdry and tarnished beside the terrifying but glorious event which which his story started. -
This is the first time I sit down with Colum McCann for a good long chat and it won't be the last.
'This Side of Brightness' certainly implies the dark side, the side that does not glitter and shine, the side hidden from view that most of us would rather avoid looking at in real life.
It's a story of tunnels, creepy places where sun never shines, needed only to connect one point to another on a subway map. We rarely reflect on tunnels, yet there are people who live there, there were people who built them. A tunnel is typically built starting from two sides, and this is how this book is fittingly structured.
From one end we start with a tumultuous history of the first underwater tunnel being built in New York at the beginning of the XX century. One of the builders risking his life in dismal working conditions is Walker, we follow him throughout the course of his life, through hardships and sorrows, through moments of happiness and bliss. On the other end we start with a bum, a mole, living in a tunnel in the present day New York (90s). We follow his story mostly looking backwards through an uncertain lens of his memory. The stories meet at a breaking point. Here, in the darkest moment, there is nowhere to go, we are deep underground, there seems to be no hope left, yet there is a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
The book raises so many important issues that it would take a long time to list them all here. I am not going to do that. You are welcome to find them yourself. I will just touch on how short a distance could be that separates our happiness from our ruin, how one step, one fall, one quantum tunneling leap can take us from the bright side of life to 'this side of brightness'. -
You know when your reading life mirrors real life? That's the way I've been living since picking up this book. I couldn't help but note similarities to 2016 race relations, police violence, and heroine addiction when reading.
McCann's novel is a family portrait, if you will, of three generations that starts in New York City in the early 1900s and ends in the early 1990s. During that time, he weaves the story of the Walker family, Nathan, a "sandhog" who, along with his immigrant friends, built the subway between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Present day, we are familiar with his grandson, Clarence Nathan, or "Treefrog," who lives in those cavernous tunnels, homeless and terribly alone. McCann deftly brings this tragic story to a conclusion that I, as the reader, questioned where it will go. While I knew the stories had to be connected, it wasn't until we got to Clarence's story that we knew he was Treefrog.
Of course, there are the analogies if one thinks about them, heaven (above the subway) and hell (below). I always wonder when I see a homeless person "what is their story?" Here we are given it. On a plate, with a side of despair. When you thought things were going well, something else happens. Even my UK copy has a portrait of the Twin Towers in the distance on the cover; once a vision of hope and beauty. They, too, are gone.
But it was McCann's writing that kept me reading. Long, flowing sentences, he brought beauty to the darkness. “Back home, he sleeps in Clarence’s bed. Then he moves across and arranges the pillows beside the ghost of his wife. All three of them lie down together. The pulse of Louis Armstrong sounds out from the record player, the notes moving tenderly through his torment.” Ok, so that might not be the most uplifting quote, but it is beautiful.
I've been making my way through my TBR and this has been sitting on my shelf since my birthday—in 2013 (thank you, Kats!). While it took me three years to read it, the time spent with it was just shy of a week. Unlike other books, this was one world I wanted to leave. And in a hurry. -
I scoff when I hear people say, "I wish I had time to read!" My reading time is at 5:30 in the morning, when I am doing my cardio, rocking out to my music, and trying to balance my book open on those cheap little plastic book "thingys". I have sensed a pattern recently when I listen to an old song from my Ipod and suddenly I am am shot back into a book I read three months, six months, or even two years ago.
When I purchase a new song, I will often open up my Ipod and listen to the same three songs as I do my 45 minutes of cardio. It seems that amazingly these songs begin to infiltrate the book, or vice versa. Suddenly the lyrics, the beat, the melody all have different meanings, due to the book that I am reading.
As Chris put it, "Some people pair wine with food, you pair music with books". Ahhhhh, yes, that is it!
On that note I will begin each book review from now on with the musical reference that will give readers a feel for the mood and the tone of the book (when applicable, still trying to pair a song with Tina Fey's new book... little tough!). I suggest listening to the song before cracking open the book, or better yet, while you are reading it to see if you can feel the tie of the song to the narrative.
This Side of Brightness had two songs, which makes perfect sense to the two entwining stories of the book (forgive any errors in my quoting)
"Keep Your Head Up" - Andy Grammer: Tied in with Nathan Walker the sandhog, who is building tunnels in the early 1900s in NYC.
"You are gonna turn out fine....but you gotta keep your head up, and you can let your hair down, I know its hard, to remember sometimes, but you gotta keep your head up...My life and my purpose is it all worth it?... Only rainbows after rain, the sun will always come again, and its a circle, circling, around again..."
"The End" - Kings of Leon: Tied in with Treefrog, who made his home in the tunnels of NYC.
"This could be the end... I just want to hold you, take you by your hands and tell you that your good enough, and tell you its going to be tough... Cuz I ain't got a home... running from the street lights..."
Read the book, listen to the songs, let me know what you think. -
McCann’s third book and second novel, This Side of Brightness has a number of things in common with McCann’s most recent novel, the prize winning Let the Great World Spin. Both novels are set in New York; both involve issues of race, class, and immigration; and both novels are testimonies to the fragility and resilience of the human condition. Some people get crushed by circumstance and choice in McCann’s novels and others endure, struggling on, reclaiming hope from ruin’s ashes.
This Side of Brightness has two main narrative threads. One begins in the early 20th century with the digging of the tunnels that will be New York’s subway system and moves forward through the decades, describing the life of sandhogs, the men who dug the tunnels, focusing on one of a trio of survivors who were sucked up from their dig beneath the East River and shot through the muck, mud, and river water to the surface. The other occurs in contemporary New York (late 1990s) and involves a set of characters, mole people, who live in the tunnels. One of the tunnel people, Treefrog, as you suspect from the beginning, will unite the two threads, his backstory revealed over time until it intersects with that of the sandhog families.
The primary sandhog is an African-American named Walker. He marries an Irish-American woman and continues to work with his brawn, though an intelligent man, until his body betrays him and he must then fight through a premature old age to help his troubled son and family. Treefrog was once married and a father, a capable provider, who retreated underground after he either imagined or actually molested his daughter. He has tremendous balance and no fear of heights and for a time worked building skyscrapers, including working on the construction of the World Trade Center. His home underground is high up in the cavernous tunnel near Riverside Park and can only be accessed by climbing and walking along narrow I-beams scores of feet above the tracks.
That image of danger, balance, darkness and light, of being at home in a lost place, pervades the novel. McCann is a canny writer. He gets character and dialogue right and builds a solid narrative that reveals and deepens as the reader advances. His talent is evident on every page and This Side of Brightness is a very good book. -
Rating: 3.75* of five
How delightful it is to go back and fill in the high spots in a favorite author's early career. This book, published in 1998, was the third published book by McCann, and showed that his command of language was equal to his command of storytelling. He's a winner of the National Book Award now, but his earlier books don't disappoint in any way. (Well, Songdogs disappointed me, but not severely.)
The evocation of the sandhog life in early 20th-century New York was strong, compelling stuff. The juxtaposition of that hard, working life with modern-day tunnel dwelling by those rendered homeless from the machinations of the current culture's prejudices was the knockout punch for me.
I was sucked into the flow of the book immediately, and the relationships that unfolded over time were so exactingly built, emotion by emotion, event by event, that I never once questioned their factual accuracy. Spoilerlessly, let's just go with: The relationships in question are now, and certainly were then, inflammatory in nature. McCann simply writes them as truth, and does so convincingly.
Expect no disappointments from reading this book. It's a humdinger of a story, well crafted and fully realized. Most assuredly recommended. -
Interesting narrative that alternates between past and present day, about the men who once traded in daily danger to dig NY's train tunnels and the relationships they formed. The writing is deeply humane; one of the back pg. blurbs calls it "an act of piety." It is.
A sample:
...If they get hurt, they will get hurt close to those they care about -- it's better to die close to family than to commerce. Still, death is seldom mentioned -- even at funerals they say nothing about the way the dead man fell forty feet, or the elevator shaft that collapsed, or the attempted suicide that was caught by the net, or the single bolt that fell from up high and created a corridor of blood in a bricklayer's head. Instead, they talk of women and girls and waitresses and the gentle curve of buttocks and flamboyant asses and the appearance of summer nipples and the way a shoulder is bared to sunlight.
Pretty wonderful. -
I'm totally in awe of Colum McCann, he writes about things that are relevant and he writes it with knowledge and passion.
The book is one of light and dark, good and bad , deep tunnels and high places always opposites, always pairs. The characters are so real , so vivid , I loved them but hated them.
This is a truly difficult book to read, how the homeless , the drug addicted , the prostitutes live, exist , survive in the tunnels of the subway that goes from Brooklyn to Manhattan , the story of Nathan Walker who at the beginning of the 20th century came to New York to dig the tunnel that will carry the trains. Black , white , Irish , Italian all dig together, their is comraderie but above ground the men stay separate.
Gritty , powerful , haunting and tragic. 4 and 1/2 **** -
Start with something positive; I loved the prose of this book. The writing was so smooth and really quite beautiful. That I enjoyed. The actual story...not so much. I was very disappointed after the hype about this book ~ I thought that this would be about the Irish experience in New York and for about a paragraph and a half it was. Much has been said about a white Irishman writing about the black experience, and that I don't have a problem with ~ what I don't like is that the African-American struggle had been told before, many times before and to greater success. The overall experience of the men who dug the tunnels in New York has not been told before and *that* is what I wanted to read. To take a somewhat obscure event and use that as the central theme, but then not really use it as much more than a footnote is so disappointing. It was a beautifully written poem, but a very disappointing story.
-
I started off really enjoying this book and getting into the historical aspect behind the building of the underground train tunnels of New York. Unfortunately as the book went on it became depressingly easy to see where it was all going - all portents were delivered with an increasingly unsubtle sledgehammer. Therefore there were no surprises. Even though I had problems with Let the Great World Spin at least it had that going for it.
That's two books I've read by McCann now in which the hype overwhelms them. I don't think I'll be trying a third. -
If the second half of this book had been as good as the first, I'd have given it four or five stars. The world of the tunneling sandhogs is wonderful, but the Harlem of the later chapters doesn't have the same texture or flow. I also thought the crucial car-crash was a bit desperate and didn't fit with the rhythms of the book. But McCann's writing is lovely and he doesn't shy away from big subjects and multiple viewpoints. Recommended.
-
I have heard amazing things about This Side of Brightness so I was excited when it was chosen for my book club. However, the book did not resonate with me in the slightest.
The story alternates between the the stories of Nathan Walker in the early 20th century and "Treefrog," a homeless man, living in a subway tunnel in the late 20th century. I thought this book was more historical fiction contrasted with present day. Nathan Walker is a "sandhog" who works on the crew digging a tunnel under the East River. I thought this was going to be about the life and struggles of these people.
After the first chapter, the story about Walker moves quickly through the years. In fact, the chapters are broken into 5 year periods moving quickly through events and decades. At the end I didn't feel I knew Walker at all. He had a difficult life and it was sad. I know things that happened but it was emotionless, detached. I was really sad because I was hooked by the first chapter and wanted to know much more about the sandhogs.
Treefrog's story was slightly more interesting, but there was no plot. Nothing really happened to him. I didn't get to know Treefrog at all. The two stories were very detached though eventually they intersect in present day, in a very predictable way that I saw coming for pages.
Overall, the writing was good. I enjoyed the metaphors used by the author and his style of writing. However, this book missed something emotionally for me. The stories moved too fast through time and just touched on brief but significant events. I feel like this either should have moved between the stories of the two characters, and not moved so quickly in time. Or this should have been a sweeping epic. The combination can work well (see Middlesex) but here there weren't enough pages to do anything profound.
The second to the last chapter of the book abruptly switches from third person to first person, stream-on-consciousness type thought. It was just too much of a change and it felt gimmicky and confusing.
I didn't hate this book but I didn't love it as much as I expected. -
I went into this with no expectations and it split me in two. I cried, I laughed, I was totally sucked into this novel and all it’s moving pieces; not wanting one chapter to end but also dying to find out where the next story will pick up from. A surprising 5*
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I think this solidifies Colum McCann as one of my all time favorite authors. You can’t deny the depth of humanity within each of his books. He imbues each character with such beautiful and heartbreaking complexity you feel them living beyond the pages. His unique writing style of building multiple narratives throughout the book only to weave them seamlessly together always has a way of bringing about a deep sense of clarity and revelation by the end. I think his best example of this is in Let the Great World Spin, which was my first and favorite of his books. But, This Side of Brightness is not far off. I live in Brooklyn and I ride the subway under the East River daily into Manhattan for work. After reading the perilous stories of the men who dug these very tunnels, and explored the gritty underworld that has inhabited them, I don’t think I’ll ever just think of the subway simply as a means of commuting again. McCann takes us through nearly a century of life above and below the city. Some moments in this book are exquisitely heartwarming and others are quite unsettling, even disturbing. But, even the darkness within these stories and characters is rendered with such a beautiful sense of truth that it is hard to not be moved by them. I think this is McCann’s true gift. Unearthing the interwoven intricacies that make up the glory and horror of humanness, but with such divinely lyrical specificity that we can’t help but gaze in awe at the magical creatures we are.
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4.5
This book was absolutely gorgeous and bittersweet and overflowing with all these strong and visceral emotions. This novel follows the story of Nathan Walker, a black man who comes to New York at the turn of the century to become a sandhog--people who dig the tunnels that carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. A crazy accident establishes a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs--one that spans generations.
As this is the first Colum McCann novel I've ever read and I can say with certainty that I am a big fan of his writing style. The whole novel felt so human and tangible.
The subject matter, at times, got a little sad and heavy for me, which is why I had to knock it down half a star, but I know that it's just part of the process of stepping outside of my reading comfort zone. -
Love all his work. Read this one years ago.
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A particularly unlucky family face a variety of painful and unfortunate deaths during the 20th Century from digging the Manhattan tunnel to squatting in it.
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Tunnels, trains. Backdrops over time. Constant as people come and go, society changing, but maybe not really. McCann not only creates characters, he inhabits them.
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" Plus tard dans le sas de traitement, tout grelottant, Nathan Walker dira à ses amis :'Ah, si tous ces gars-là causaient américain, il y aurait pas eu de malheur, il serait rien arrivé, rien du tout' "
Quel lien entre ?
Nathan Walker, originaire de Georgie, terrassier sur le chantier des tunnels, il creuse les sombres galeries sous l'Hudson, reliant le coeur de Manhattan à la ville de New York au début du 19e siècle
Et Treefog, jeune homme d'une trentaine d'année, sans abris réduit à une vie sous terre. Lui qui arpente ses voies souterrraines, y établit son "nid". Auparavant, ils construisaient les charpentes métalliques des grattes ciel au coeur de Manhattan. Il a reçu l'équilibre en héritage et s'est entrainé en faisant l'équilibriste sur les toits de Manhattan, à 25 m de haut sous l'oeil protecteur de son grand-père ? Comment se trouve t il en début des années 90 au sein de cette communauté de sans abris, aux portes de l'oubli, la famille qu'il formait avec sa femme Dancesca et sa fille LEnora éclatée?
Dans les saisons de la Nuit, Colum McCaan explore l'histoire de deux hommes à deux époques l'un creuse des tunnels l'autre construit des buildings, travail fait d'épreuves physiques, de combats sociales leur peau est de la couleur de l'ebene. Des le début, je me suis sentie happée par la noirceur de cette histoire, qui démarre sous terre, par ces deux personnages si forts et éprouvés, par l'existence. L'art de Mc Caan est dans l'empathie qui l'habite, en écrivant ces vies de désespoir tout en leur insufflant une énergie vitale.
Comme toujours le récit est double chez Mc Caan, je pourrai presque écrire je suis habituée mais non il surprend par cette écriture à la fois réaliste et poétique, ces descriptions de lieux, d'ambiance, qui lui permettent de nous connecter à l'interiorité de ces personnages -Ça me cause une émotion vive- Sa manière viscérale de décrire la vie de Treefog est entière, et même si souvent il brasse beaucoup de sujets à vocation sociale, ségrégation, vie de famille, ici la dureté du travail physique, il ne survole jamais les problèmes, sans jamais négliger une fenêtre positive. Mc Caan est sûrement un idéaliste quelque part, qu'il continue à écrire avec cette humanité profonde, il sera assuré que je continuerai à le lire. -
I'm so relieved after reading this book. I fell in love with Let the Great World Spin and had subsequent high hopes for Songdogs, which unfortunately left me feeling severely underwhelmed. For some reason I set up hurdles for myself: I couldn't read Transatlantic until I read Songdogs and This Side of Brightness. After the first hurdles was so disappointing, I procrastinated to the point of almost giving up on my goal. What I had loved so much about Let the Great World Spin was how dynamic its scope was: anchored in a singular event, it spanned brief moments of so many lives. I wanted to find that so badly in Songdogs and didn't; thankfully, however, I found that style alive and well in This Side of Brightness. The leapfrogging through generations, back and forth, is eloquently and gracefully done, weaving together a family's struggle with racism and the multifaceted oppression that comes with it that stands to represent the trials of many others, stretching even farther past the '90s and into present day. While crushing in its brutal realism, brilliant moments of genuine love and togetherness are enmeshed in the suffering, buoying this book into balance.
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this little blurb will contain some spoilers:
i loved this book. it was huge, expansive, and poetic. it was about life and all life entails: love, pain, loss, joy, triumph, defeat, small pleasures, huge disappointments, all that is great about humanity, and all that is terrible. it is amazing that a simple, fairly short book was able to do all it did.
but i have to say, it kind of killed me. i kind of killed me the way the daily news kills me in small pieces every day. i can watch some of the news, but eventually i have to turn it off, otherwise i become too heartbroken. "this side of brightness" was hard to read. i know it was supposed to end on a note of redemption and optimistic possibility, but i felt so beaten down by the stuff that was hard, that i couldn't feel optimistic at the end.
truthfully, the murder of the cat, castor, was just too much for me to bear. after that, i had a hard time feeling any joy or optimism. it seems so fucked up of me, that characters can be killed in tragic ways, but when a pet is killed i just can't stand it. i almost take it personally. i think if that part hadn't happened, i would give the book a 5. -
The Boston Globe called this novel "luminescent." No.
For me reading This Side of Brightness is a journey into darkness. Whether we are watching the sandhogs dig their way across the river or we are in a tunnel peopled by the homeless, reading this novel is a profoundly dark experience, literally and figuratively. Even though there is light at the end of the narrative tunnel, it doesn't counter the long slog through despair that makes up the bulk of the book. McCann nails his subject in the phrase, "terrible human degradation." How low can you go? Pretty damn low, apparently. Every time I picked up this novel, I did so reluctantly and only got to the end by sheer determination. What made it at all worthwhile to me was the masterful way in which the author wove his two plot lines together. Yes, we suspected they would intersect, but they did so seamlessly. Much as I disliked reading this novel, I had to take my hat off to McCann for the sheer virtuosity of this section of the novel as well as for his strongly drawn characters. Would I lend This Side of Brightness to a friend? Never.
