| Title | : | Thirteen Ways of Looking |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1443446254 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781443446259 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published October 13, 2015 |
| Awards | : | The Story Prize (2015), The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 'What Time is it Now, Where You Are?' (2016) |
Thirteen Ways of Looking is framed by two author’s notes, each dealing with the brutal attack the author suffered last year and strikes at the heart of contemporary issues at home and in Ireland, the author’s birth place.
Brilliant in its clarity and deftness, this collection reminds us, again, why Colum McCann is considered among the very best contemporary writers.
Thirteen Ways of Looking Reviews
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Oh shit. A writer I never heard of, a collection of short stories. What had I signed up for? Short stories are so iffy—so often they are too subtle, which translates into boring, or they try to be all artsy with an ambivalent ending. Guys, this collection (one novella and three short stories) gets five stars! The language alone made my head dance. I talk about the novella the most because it’s the heftiest, taking up over half the book. This review is WAY too long, so I won’t be offended if you just scan the thing. I’m a damn motor-mouth, and I just can’t help it.
Story 1: Thirteen Ways of Looking
The language in this great novella totally seduced me, with its jazzy stream of consciousness about a vivid 82-year-old guy with lots of self-awareness. He twitches and groans and bitches as he endures the humiliations of old age. He spends the rest of the time reflecting on his life, his family, and his work. There’s an especially poignant scene when the old man meets his son at lunch, and his son is glued to his cell phone. At the core, there’s a decent crime mystery, but it takes a backseat to the character study of the old man.
Despite my utter love of this story, I hate to say my complaint board is half full. But really, I see all the complaints in small letters. And I found myself saying, “So what?” You’ll see that I can barely complain without adding a caveat. I see all the good stuff in big letters, stealing my attention.
Complaint Board:
Put a sock in it. (Maybe half a sock.) The writer liked the sound of his voice a bit much. There’s a lot of description and a lot of philosophical musings (all accessible; not convoluted), and it slows down the story a little. I swear it took the old guy 20 pages to cross the huge New York City street. But he was so damn intriguing, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I stood right there with him in the traffic, putting up with him just like the drivers were—they were probably blasting their horns, but I didn’t care. In the end, all the jazzy language kept my ears and heart happy.
13 perspectives, my ass! Each chapter opened with parts of a Wallace Stevens poem about a blackbird; the poem supposedly showed lots of (13?) perspectives—the origin of the book and story title, Thirteen Ways of Looking. I didn't get the poem (just too dumb?) and I didn't get the connection. Yes, there were various camera perspectives of places where the old man had been, but they didn't have much to do with the story. To me, they were just visual perspectives, clues to a crime—they added nothing. Only two perspectives were important to me: the old man's (which was vivid and rich) and the cops’ (a minor story line).
Don’t leave me hanging, damn it! The story has one of THOSE endings. The author could have given me one teensy weensy sentence and I would have been happy. It wasn’t a huge piss-off because there was a lot of closure (the arc of the story worked), but still. One teensy weensy sentence…
Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about! There were numerous literary and cultural allusions that flew right by me. Always a humiliating experience! But the unknown allusions were few, so in the end it was no biggie.
Despite these minor complaints, this story was rich rich rich. 4.5 stars
Story 2: What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?
Holy shit! Coolest story EVER. A writer walks through the steps of building a story. So creative, so different. He develops characters in a flash, yet they feel so real! How does he do that? He imagines a woman soldier calling her woman lover on New Years’. He writes out the zillion questions a writer would have when creating a story. I was all in. My only complaint is that it was so very very short; I would have loved to hear a longer story, but I must admit, it did work perfectly as it was. I'll be thinking and talking about this story for a long time. I want to read it aloud to you right now, which is weird because I'm not big on reading aloud (with the exception of reading Goodnight Moon to the kids long ago). 10 stars.
Story 3: Sh'khol
A mom and her mentally disabled son are vacationing on the coast of Ireland. The son disappears, and the guilt-ridden mom freaks and grieves--and gets a lesson in letting go. Her emotions are authentic and heart-breaking. The mom is super well-drawn, and the story is really tense. 4.5 stars.
Story 4: Treaty
Wow. A nun who had been brutalized and violently raped for months has a crisis 37 years later. Her flashbacks reminded me a little of those portrayed in
An Untamed State. This story is intense, chilling, and disturbing. If I had to list characters I hate, nuns might be at the top. I know, I'm being a hard ass, it’s just that they always talk about (or to) God, they just do! But I loved this nun. The story was an intense page-turner. 5 stars.
The Joy Jar is full!
The Joy Jar is sitting in front of the Complaint Board, blocking it from sight. Nothing but yummy cookies in this Joy Jar! What delicious, rhythmic language! The writer is a master wordsmith, with one cool word association after another. Great character studies, keen insights galore. I highlighted a lot. I’ve never read a short story collection so fast and I’ve never remembered so much. I must check out his other books, I must.
Publisher’s Weekly gave this collection a starred review and said “Separate and together, these four works prove McCann a master with a poet’s ear, a psychologist’s understanding, and a humanitarian’s conscience.” Amen.
Btw, there’s a brief and interesting author’s note. He had been attacked last year (2014), and he talks about which stories were written before and after. Check it out.
Thank you NetGalley for the advance copy. -
I am not a good reader of short fiction . I'm always anxious that I'll turn the page, the story will be over and then I'll be left wondering - did I get it , did I miss something? Then I'll have to move on to the next story still thinking about the last one. But there was no anxiety for me here with Colum McCann's collection of a novella and three shorter works because reading even a sentence by this man is so worth it . This is a powerful collection written in beautifully perceptive language .
In the title novella we have the story of an aged judge on the last day of his life. It's not long , but yet we know his family history, the love of his life , his struggle with aging and about his children. We see things through different perspectives , the judge's , the security cameras , the detectives reflecting on what they see . I was not familiar with the Wallace Stevens poem , "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", that this is titled after and interspersed with as each chapter begins with a stanza of the poem , but it is perfect in illustrating the varying perspectives.
My favorite in the collection is the story "What Time is It Now , Where You Are?". It's a gift of two stories - about a writer creating a story before our very eyes . The images are so clear its like looking at a photograph , wonderful examples of McCann's gorgeous writing . The writing process itself is unveiled in an intimate way as the writer tells us what he is imagining it is like for this female soldier alone in Afghanistan on New Year's Eve . The writer questioning himself and his characters and what they will do and feel , walking us through hypotheticals . I was mesmerized .
As soon as I started reading " Sh'khol", I realized that I read this last year when it was available as a stand alone story on Amazon called "Gone ". I loved this beautifully written story of this mother and son , but felt the same way on rereading it - I wish there was more of the story . The final story "Treaty" is a gripping tale of an aging nun who confronts the man who tortured and raped her 37 years ago .
There is not much more I can say about this other than if you haven't read anything by McCann, you are missing out on some truly great writing. I have read and loved
Let the Great World Spin and
TransAtlantic and now I know I have to read his other novels that have been on my to read list .
Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley . -
Thirteen Ways of Looking is a mesmerizing collection of a novella and three short stories. Irish author Colum McCann's radiant writing seems the consummate soother of the ever-shuffling soul while his stories stir one's deepest sentiments: a child disappears overnight from his mother's bed at a seaside resort; a writer goes through the stop-and-go process of writing a short story on distant lovers; a nun faces her fears and resentments after seeing her South American captor/rapist on a televised "peace" press conference 30 years later; and, in the eponymous novella, an elderly, retired and widowed judge's stream of consciousness on the day of his murder brilliantly mixed with a third person narrative of the NYPD detectives' investigation.
An amusing sample from the novella comes in the judge's inner dialogue describing his disappointment with his son Elliott:“He took a trip ... up to ... Elliott's house, his mansion rather. Awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door and next door to that. A row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity. His very own son. His big, bald son. Who could believe it. The bigness, the baldness, the stupidity. In a house designed to bore the daylight out of visitors, no character at all, all blonde wood and fluorescent lighting and clean white machinery.
The gorgeous prose flows over the soul as a boreal breeze ripples a field of shamrocks. In writing this review I searched for an appropos term for a prose narrative that is as poetic and hypnotic as it is moving. One I found should do the trick: a "euphony" (pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words), with the descriptors "heartrending" and "profound."
Not to mention his brand new wife, number three, a clean white machine herself. Up from the cookie cutter and into Elliott's life, she might as well have jumped out of the microwave, her skin orange, her teeth pearly white. A trophy wife. But why the word 'trophy'? Something to shoot on a safari.” -
As soon as one steps into these stories, it is apparent to readers of McCann that you are entering a world only he can create. He notices the little things in life, and in simple but brilliant prose relates these to the reader. It is this talent that lets readers thoroughly become one with the story.
In this collection he tackles some tough themes, the way a writer writes and where his ideas come from, aging and the mental and physical changes this beings. Memory and how it can be evoked by a simple image or story. My favorite was SH'khol, where a young mother and translator is working on a book that seems to correlate to her life when her young son goes missing. The most brutal was the last and it was at times difficult to read. There was little humor in most of these stories, but there was hope and that helped.
I originally gave this four stars but these are stories I have thought about throughout the last two days and that, plus the brilliant writing changed my rating to a five. There is one quote from my favorite story that I absolutely loved, but the publishers do not like the readers to quote from ARC's in case they are changes or modified. It is a quote about mothers and hopefully it will not be changed.
ARC from publisher. -
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.......by Wallace Stevens
1) among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
What is the eye of the Blackbird.
2) I was at three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds
3) The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
4) A man and a woman
Are one.
A man any women any blackbird
Are one.
5) I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty add innuendoes,
The black bird whistling
Or just after.
6) icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass
The shadow of the Blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
7) O thin men of Haddam
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the woman about you?
8) I know Noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved.
In what I know.
9) When the black bird flew out of sight
It marked the edge
I was one of many circles.
10) At the site of blackbirds
Flying in a greenlight,
Even the bawls of euphony
Would cry and out sharply.
11) He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds
12) The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying
13) It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Colum McCann starts by masterfully crafting a novella with thirteen chapters borrowed from
the inspiration of the above poem ..,,"Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird". ...followed by
three short stories.
In the novella, "Thirteen Ways of Looking", (the book's title), Eighty-two year old
Mendelssohn ...is being viewed with cameras -- closed circuit filming -- even followed
when he arranges to meet his adult son, Elliot, in a restaurant.
"That's my boy in the corner of the restaurant, shouting now into his cell phone, and
here I sit, with a glass of water, watching, and the truth of the matter is that I couldn't
love him any more or dislike him any less--the curse of the father".
I was left with questions about their father/son relationship...wondering what 'curse'
Elliot felt as his father's son, and would he be able to say that he felt complete with his father
after he died?
The other three stories were shorter, but also tender, dealing with sensitive issues...crime, loss,
and threat.
In the author's notes, we learn that McCann had been punched unconscious, then hospitalized
after trying to help a woman who had been assaulted in the street.
THIS FRICKIN BROKE MY HEART!!!
Some of the stories in this book were written before the incident- some after. It's very clear -without McCann even telling us, that "Treaty", was written 'after'.
"Sometimes it seems to me that we are writing our lives in advance, but at other times we
can only ever look back. In the end, though, every word we write is autobiographical,
perhaps most especially when we attempt to avoid the autobiographical".
Elegant, reflective, courageous, and tender luminous prose.
Thank You to Random House Publishing, Netgalley, and 'The Talented' Colum McCann -
'The more we know of time, the less we have of it.'
Thirteen Ways of Looking is the story of an elderly man as he goes about his daily routine, dealing with the inescapable indignities that go along with old age, all the while missing his wife. The characterization is impeccable and haunting, for this is the morning of the last day of his life. He meets his son for lunch, but son is there in body only, taking call after call on his cell phone, never even making eye contact with his father. It made my heart hurt to read it. So timely, so true.
Three short stories follow this novella, and they are all superb. I found Treaty, the last story in the mix, to be particularly striking. '. . . slippages of memory. . .', 'Mangled sentences, mislaid keys, forgotten names.' I am already ready for more from this author.
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This was my first by Colum McCann. In a year where short stories are having quite an impact on me, this is yet another uniquely styled and beautifully rendered collection. Unlike anything I have read yet, these stories (though very different from one another) seem to share an honest look at the human condition...how we think, rethink, question our actions, what if. Intense character studies, beautiful prose, and raw emotion delivered in an almost stream of consciousness.
I am so pleased that I happened upon this hypnotic audio narrated by the author. I cannot recommend this delivery highly enough. These vivid, honest stories are best delivered in the author's own mesmerizing voice and magical cadence. I suspect listening to him read aloud his to-do list would be as lovely but less rewarding. His author's note gave me chills. 4.5 stars -
3.5 Stars,
Thirteen ways of Looking by Colum McCann consists of a Novella and 3 short strories. I am not a fan of short stories as they rarely work for me but with the right author short stories can be quite interesting and entertaining.
I enjoyed the Novella which told the story of a retired elderly judge living in New York in today's world of suverlience. The story is well plotted and as usual with all McCann's books the prose is poetic and vivid. While I loved the writing I did find sections where the descriptions and prose got a little too much and it seemed like the author was trying too hard but towards the second half of the Novella the stroy seemed to get back on track and I did love the conclusion.
I listened to an interview that Colum McCann gave recently where he discussed the horrendous attack on him in 2014. He came across as a very interesting man and he has a beautiful hypnotic voice. I wish he would narrate his own Novels as he has such charm.
I didn't enjoy with the second short story as I found it was pretty much over before it begun and I didn't connect with story at all. I did really enjoy the third story called "Sh'kol" about a woman who lives in Galway with her son who has special needs. This story really touched me as the characters were convincing and this short story is extremely well written.
I think this book would make an excellent bookclub read as it covers a lot of topics that would create marvellous discussion for any group of readers.
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This audiobook includes a novella and three (3) short stories. I enjoyed them all. The book is narrated by the author, Colum McCann, who provided an excellent reading. I like stories dealing with real life emotions and situations. This book did not let me down.
The title of the book, Thirteen Ways of Looking: Fiction comes from the novella which is about a retired judge and his struggles dealing with old age, being a widower, and a selfish son. A lot can happen in one day.
Sh 'khol is about a women living with a young son, who despite his challenges disappears one morning, making it necessary to call her ex-husband, who had failed to call their son the day before; Christmas day. She blames herself for their son's disappearance.
What Time is it Now, Where you are?, is a story about dealing with war. A Marine phones home on New Years Eve.
Treaty, is a story about an old nun dealing with an act of violence, from her past. She was kidnapped years ago and deals with demons. After seeing her atacker on TV she decides to track him and confront him.
This was the first audio book I downloaded to my Kindle. Before now I had listened to CDs. This is much easier.
Tip: Do not listen to while relaxing in an "Easy" chair. -
The mood/Traced in the shadow/An indecipherable cause.
~ Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Colum McCann traces the shadows of tension and love, despair and tragedy in this collection of one novella and three short stories-pieces that held me transfixed with their poignancy and fierce energy.
The title story which opens the collection is like a tightly-scripted short film, the camera moving from the close-ups of former Brooklyn Supreme Court judge Peter Mendelssohn, his inner dialogue scripted to show the indignities of aging, the grief of losing his wife, and the bitter disappointment that is his careless, self-absorbed, wealthy son. Then the camera becomes a dispassionate witness to a murder, documenting the facts that detectives sift through painfully, facts captured on other cameras. We read, frame-by-frame, the interpretations of others as the future loops over the past. The way McCann maintains the tension of a murder mystery interspersed with an old man's rambling is masterful--long breaths, held breaths, racing heartbeats--he works it all in and then ends on one singular exhale that is stopped short by ambiguity.
What Time Is It Now, Where Are You? is a meta-meditation on the creative process, how a writer manufactures a story and then loses himself in its possibilities and meanings. “The essence of Sandi’s story has begun to place layers upon layers, though he does not know yet who the loved one is or what might eventually exist between them.” This, this is exactly what happens. Rarely does a story arrive in the head and heart intact. It builds in layers, some of which have to be destroyed to make room for others, but it is a process that is defined by work (as the author within the story knows, watching the months tick by to deadline before he finally commits himself to writing) and rarely by inspiration.
Treaty caught me completely unaware. It is about how “the past can glide away so easily, how the present can drift, how they sometimes collide . . .” The story's central character is an aging nun, who has recently arrived at a convent in Long Island after a breakdown at her previous residence-a shelter in Texas for young women with unwanted pregnancies. One night, while watching the evening news, she sees the man who had tortured and raped her nearly thirty years earlier in a South American jungle. Once a guerilla fighter, he has remade himself into a peace negotiator. The nun has remade herself into a survivor, caring for other survivors. In a moment of private, profound horror, she confronts her torturer.
Oh, but it is the story whose touch left the deepest imprint on my soul. A woman and her deaf, possibly autistic, adopted son in a seaside cottage west of Galway—both abandoned souls—epitomize the torture and necessity of love. She gives the boy a wetsuit two sizes too big for Christmas, something for him to grow into. The next morning she wakes up and the boy and the wetsuit are gone. This difficult child she is raising alone, his silence and occasional violence, fills her with despair, but when he goes missing, she becomes undone. Her grief and guilt are as vast as the Atlantic that seems to have swallowed her child.
This collection was started before Colum McCann himself was brutally attacked in Brooklyn and finished after he recovered enough to continue writing. In the ending Author Note he states “Sometimes it seems to me that we are writing our lives in advance, but at other times we can only ever look back. In the end, though, every word we write is autobiographical, perhaps most especially when we attempt to avoid the autobiographical.”
Although Thirteen Ways of Looking is not autobiographical in the sense of actual events portrayed, what I believe McCann means is that we write what is alive in our souls, what we know to be true because of how our experiences leave us, changed, and often in pieces. Writing is a way to rebuild those pieces into something we understand.
An extraordinary read. -
Such a treat to read such good writing. Thirteen Ways of Looking is a novella followed by 3 short stories written by Colum McCann. I read and loved Let the Great World Spin. And I can say the same about this book, especially the opening novella,Thirteen Ways of Looking -- that on its own accounts for my 5 star rating. McCann portrays a day in the life of an 82 year old man, which happens to be his last day. The man is a retired judge living in Manhattan's upper east side. In every other chapter, we hear the judge's inner voice as he makes sense of his present aged circumstances and his past -- his childhood in Ireland, his recently deceased wife, his dealings with his two adult children, his live in nurse, his work as a judge, his failing body, his lunch with his distracted son... What makes this novella so powerful is not the story, but his voice, the drift of his thoughts, the "ladle he dips in his memories" as he puts it, the emotions of his age, which are all pitch perfect. In the other alternating chapters, through the lens of the cameras and individuals who witnessed the man's last few hours, we read about the investigation that pieced together his death. It makes for a moving clever read, complete with beautiful prose and great imagery. My only complaint is that the story depends on an odd coincidence that I found distracting, but it's a minor complaint. The three other stories are also a great display of McCann's deftness with language and depth in creating characters. And there is a moving afterword that gives context to the stories. This makes me want to read Transatlantic by McCann which I have not yet read. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
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‘For all its imagined moments, literature works in unimaginable ways.’– Colum McCann
How many ways are there to write a review? As numerous as the myriad ways of looking at or interpreting a book. Thirteen Ways of Looking comprised a novella and three stories. One of the things that struck me is how this collection of short fiction reads like a commentary on the creative process of writing while it is simultaneously engaged in active story-telling.
In ‘What Time Is it Now Where You Are?’, a writer who lives in New York is tasked to write a short story for the New Year’s Eve edition of a newspaper magazine. We read about his false starts and struggles when ‘All the beginnings he attempted - scribbled down in notebooks - wrote themselves into the dark.’ We see his story taking shape as he breathes life into the protagonist and gives her a name, a home, a Marine outpost in Afghanistan, a phone call she is to make to her loved ones on New Year’s Eve. We hear the writer agonizing over how he should end his story. Interestingly enough, the reader shares this artistic journey and formulates his or her expectation of how the story should unfold. It is, for me, startling to learn that a story has a will of its own. It writes itself. Of course, it can write itself in thirteen different ways.‘What Time Is it Now Where You Are?�� is a chilling meta-fictional tale.
The novella that bears the title of this collection of stories adopts a brilliant structure. The key character is Peter Mendelssohn, an octogenarian Supreme Court judge who is coming to terms with the indignity of aging and having to be diapered by a lived-in nurse. Each of the thirteen chapters begins with a stanza of Wallace Steven’s poem, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.’ There are eight cameras in Mendelssohn’s East 86th Street apartment in NY City and twelve cameras in Chialli’s, his favorite Italian restaurant. A homicide happens at Chialli’s and the detectives replay the camera recordings in their investigations. McCann likens the police investigation of this crime to the creative endeavors of a poet. ‘Poets like detectives, know that truth is laborious…it doesn’t occur by accident, rather it is chiseled and worked into being, the product of time and distance and graft.’ McCann tells us that ‘... the homicide, like the poem, had to open itself to whatever might still be discovered.’ The intrigue surrounding the murder is interspersed with Mendesoohn’s monologue and third person narration that offer glimpses of his early life in Dublin, his marriage, his disappointment with his errant son and an absent daughter, his present day loneliness and curmudgeonly self, and what I appreciate most, his self-deprecating humor. And although too neatly concluded, the mystery is solved and the poem duly composed.
In Sh’khol, we meet Rebecca, a single mother who is translating a novella from Hebrew. She is spending Christmas by the coast in Galway with her hearing-impaired 13-year-old adoptive son from Russia, when he goes missing in his wet suit. We feel her agony in her desperate search for her son. How uncanny that in the novella she is translating, there is a parent, too, who has lost a child. It upsets Rebecca that in the novella she is translating, there is no Hebrew word for a parent who has lost a child. I marvel at how McCann skifully locates fiction within fiction.
In Treaty, Beverly, an elderly Maryknoll nun is traumatized by a TV image of her Latin-American rapist and torturer who brutally abused her at age 26. She decides to go to London to confront Carlos, now a politician representing himself as a man of peace and working on behalf of coal miners. Should she expose him for who he really is? Or can the past be redeemed or re-interpreted in light of the present?
An author’s note at the end alerts the reader to a traumatic injury McCann sustained as a result of an assault in 2014, the year this book was written. Some of the actions in these stories happened before the assault, others took inspiration from it. Again, I was fascinated by how writers, unbeknownst to themselves, write their lives into stories they craft. There can be thirteen ways of reframing an experience, but McCann tells us, ‘In the end though, every word we write is autobiographical.’
Thirteen Ways of Looking is my first book by Colum McCann, and I know I have found another gem of a writer. -
Colum McCann’s new collection includes a piece that sounds like the classic high-school cop-out: It’s a story about a writer trying to write a story. That McCann manages to overcome the necrotic cliche of that premise is a sign of his technical skill; that he makes the story so emotionally compelling is a sign of his genius.
“What Time Is It Now, Where Are You?” is the shortest piece in “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” and the only one that feels autobiographical, though McCann claims in the “Author’s Note” that “every word we write is autobiographical.” In 13 short segments, this story describes an Irish writer living in New York struggling to meet a deadline for a newspaper magazine. His editor’s only criterion is that the plot be related to New Year’s Eve, a topic that looks as fresh as Dick Clark. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert... -
3.5
When I heard Colum McCann would be attending the upcoming Louisiana Book Festival, I decided to read this collection. The four stories are mostly on the longish side; the title story is a novella. The shortest concerns the writerly process, though it hangs on a tale, and was a reason for my choosing this book, but it turned out to be my least favorite. McCann’s prose style can be wordy, but it mostly moves briskly, sometimes feeling breathless.
All the stories follow the theme of the title story in some way and each is told in thirteen parts, though I didn’t notice that in half of them. (The note at the end told me so.) The structure is most obvious in the title story, as each section is prefaced with a stanza of the
Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” (I tried to connect each stanza to each section but mostly failed and then gave up.) In all the stories the most prominent way of looking is that of surveillance; how even with multiple physical and mental instruments, an incomplete or ‘wrong’ story still emerges: a worthy theme.
The last two stories are focused on female protagonists and were the strongest, though I wasn’t sure of them during their beginnings. Several times, recently, I’ve read, either in a news story or a novel, someone saying there’s no word for a parent whose child has died. From the penultimate story “Sh’kol” I’ve discovered that’s not true for all languages. A translator, dealing with her special-needs son and working with a Hebrew novel, struggles to find an appropriate English word for a fictional couple whose children have died. The solution is satisfying. -
I'd rate this 4.5 stars.
Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for making it available!
Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin was a highly heralded, award-winning novel that I never could get into. I tried several separate times to read it and could never get past the first few pages. But seeing so many glowing reviews of his new short story collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking, from a number of Goodreads friends whose opinions I value, I thought I needed to give this a shot. Haven't we all struggled to read at least one critically acclaimed book out there?
There were moments when reading the title novella which opened the collection that I wondered if for some reason McCann's writing was somehow impenetrable to me. The story of the last morning in the life of a retired judge (he doesn't know that, of course), which juxtaposed his reflections on his career, his late wife, his family, and the miseries of old age with the investigation into his death had flashes of brilliance, but I found the character a little too pompous and long-winded. After a while I grew weary of his verbosity, but the tautness of the other half of the story kept me from giving up on this collection. I also found the ending a little disappointing, but McCann's writing was at once both vivid and languid.
The three remaining stories in this collection are absolutely exquisite. I honestly don't know which of them I loved the most, because each had such beautiful, moving moments. "What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?" is two stories in one—a bird's eye view into the creative process of a writer as they develop a short story, little by little, and the actual story itself as it unfolds, a tale about a young Marine in Afghanistan planning to call home when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. (But it is so much more.) "Sh'khol" tells the story of a mother whose biggest nightmare appears to come true when her deaf son disappears early one morning while they are vacationing together in Ireland, and she fears the worst. In "Treaty," an elderly nun must confront a tragic period of her life that occurred more than 35 years before, when she catches a glimpse of a suddenly familiar man on television.
McCann's use of language and imagery is breathtaking at times, and I found these three stories in particular immensely moving and memorable. I almost wish each was as long as the title novella, as I wanted more time with these characters and their stories. What's even more amazing is the fact that McCann himself was assaulted while writing this collection, and as he reflects in the afterword, some stories were written before the incident and some after.
As he puts it, "For all its imagined moments, literature works in unimaginable ways." I'd agree completely. So much of this book touched me in many, many ways, and I am grateful for the opportunity to read it.
See all of my reviews at
http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo.... -
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.
Having read a few Colum McCann books beforehand--both short stories, novellas and novels--I went into this with a decent understanding of his writing style. It's beautiful. He is able to craft the most fluid sentences that appeal to so many of your senses. The stories in this collection are lyrically written, honest and at times harrowing, never lacking power.
The title novella, Thirteen Ways of Looking, draws it's name from a Wallace Stevens poem. Each section of the story--there are 13--begins with a stanza from Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." We get inside the head of an elderly man who is curmudgeonly and yet totally delightful. It's a bizarre juxtaposition that fits the story's eerie tone.
"What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?" follows with a meta story of a writer writing a story. McCann ruminates on the many questions, like the title itself, that weave their way in and out of a story during the creative process.
In "Sh'khol" McCann returns to his native Ireland to tell about a single mother who lives with her disabled, adoptive son on the west coast. It's tragic and yet maintains a hopeful quality that McCann balances so well in his stories.
Finally, "Treaty" which is possibly my favorite in the collection, follows an elderly nun who is coming to terms with the reappearance of her rapist more than thirty years after the attack. It's dark and strong, and still manages to handle the topic with grace and humility without depriving the woman of agency. I thought it was skillfully told and a must read. -
Although I am not a huge fan of short stories, I enjoyed this collection of one novella and three stories. I think this author is such a wonderful writer that it doesn’t really matter what he writes about, I just want to read it. He also did an excellent job of narrating the audiobook edition.
My favorite was the novella, “Thirteen Ways of Looking”, in which an elderly, former Brooklyn Supreme Court judge retraces his career, family ties, the death of his wife, and his current dependency on his housekeeper due to his physical deterioration. It mostly takes place on a single day that turns out to be particularly meaningful. I also liked “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are”. It tells a compelling story, while letting us in on the writer’s creative process. “Sh’khol” deals with a deaf child who goes missing after receiving a gift of a wetsuit from his mother. My least favorite story was “Treaty” about a nun who comes face to face with a horrible memory. 4.5 stars -
What a treat was listening to
Colum McCann narrating these stories!
This is a wonderful collection, will try to come back later with a more detail review, but I really enjoyed these, particularly the novella that gives its name to the book. -
4.5 stars: I’m a huge fan of Colum McCann. Generally I don’t favor books of short stories, but when McCann is the author, I read. The first story, which is more of a novella, is entitled “Thirteen Ways of Looking”. It’s a story of a day of a retired New York City Judge. It’s the inner musings really, of the judge. McCann’s prose is brilliant. The Judge’s musings are not only authentic they are comedic. I thought McCann got into my Grandpa’s mind, realizing the fumbling of old age and attempting to accept it with grace and humor. As the judge goes through his day, he reflects upon meaningful family moments, especially with his wife. He takes stock of his life, coming to terms with his failures and recognizing some of his happier times. I adored this story.
All four stories are about internal meditations and attempting to find grace and acceptance in life. The second story, the shortest, was the one I didn’t enjoy as much as the other three. The last, “Treaty” left me breathless. A retired nun trying to find the grace of God after discovering her former rapist is masquerading as a man of peace. In “Sh’Khol”, McCann captures the inner ruminations of a mother who feels negligent and substandard in her maternal abilities. In all his stories, McCann captures each character’s inner demons: flawed characters that want to be virtuous and who fall short of inner expectations.
Colum McCann continues his literary perfection in this work of short stories. I highly recommend it. -
I'm having a bit of a difficult reading period. Nothing satisfies me, I'm feeling impatient and nervous. After a few books that didn't work for me this moment, this book by Colum McCann was the right one. A collection of powerfull short fiction wich didn't leave the reader untouched. They kept you thinking and feeling. I felt like emotional and intellectual interaction was needed again. Certainly a strong collection.
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There are four stories here, one of novella length. One is a short piece about a short story writer, hard on a deadline, who is going through the process, hurriedly, of writing a story. The less said about that one, the better.
Sh’khol
Sh’khol is a Hebrew word meaning a parent whose child has died. There are similar words in Sanskrit and Arabic (I take this on faith), but none in Russian, French, German, Irish. There is no such single word in English.
Our protagonist is a translator of Hebrew literature and has come upon that word in a text. Once she was married, and she and her husband adopted a Russian orphan, a fetal alcohol syndrome baby, and deaf, too. But the husband has left; he has a new family; and the adopted son is a teenager, with issues.
Has he died?
It was in this story that I came upon the line I quoted in my ‘progress’: Impossible to be a child forever. A mother, always. That’s beautiful, for all its simplicity; and better yet when inserted here, after a very moving and telling vignette.
Thirteen Ways of Looking
. . . is about an old judge on the last day of life, his last day because he will sustain a random punch on the street, fall on his head, and die.
Treaty
. . . is about an old nun, who was once a victim of a sexual and physical assault. She sees her assailant on television thirty years later, now a ‘man of peace’ at a global conference.
You have to read the end story to fully appreciate these stories.
Colum McCann can reinvent the language, talking, for instance, of a house ‘gone sour’. Or he can just stop you still, as he did me, with this fragment of poem:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after. -
Colum McCann has written a marvelous collection of short fiction where he takes the reader into the minds of the protagonists. Some of his stories involve acts of violence which he can write about convincingly. McCann himself was a victim of an attack after he tried to help a woman who was being abused on a New Haven sidewalk.
The title story "Thirteen Ways of Looking" starts each section with a verse from Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". An aging retired judge wakes, lamenting the loss of dignity in old age, and appreciating the years spent with his recently deceased wife. Then he moves on to a walk in the blowing snow for lunch with his son who is more interested in his phone than his father. Some of the story is written in a stream of consciousness style, and I could empathize with the judge. It concludes with a look at his last day of life from many angles since surveillance cameras have been watching (just like the eye of a blackbird).
The collection also included three shorter stories. In "Sh'khol", set on the chilly Irish coast, a mother wakes to find her deaf son and his Christmas gift of a new wetsuit gone, and she fears the worst. In "What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?", a writer with a deadline attempts to write a meaningful story about a soldier in another time zone with a New Year's Eve theme. In "Treaty", an elderly nun sees her South American kidnapper on a television news show, and finds that the man who assaulted her years ago is now involved in a peace conference. It's not often that we have the pleasure of reading a collection of short fiction where every story is as memorable and well-written as those in Colum McCann's latest book. -
I will never tire of the beauty and vulnerability of McCann's writing. He's a master story-teller, pulling me into this novella and accompanying stories immediately. For the first time in months I couldn't wait to get home and return to the worlds he builds, the people who seem so familiar.
From the start of the first title story, "I was born in the middle of my very first argument," I was hooked. As the title character struggles with the indignities and loneliness of aging, I recognized this man. In him I saw my father, my grandfather -- strong, proud men left with such little control. The murder mystery seems secondary to to the character study.
Likewise, the final story, Treaty, packs an emotional punch that has less to do with the rape backstory, and more to do with the struggle of sister Beverly to make sense of time itself. I read the whole thing with my heart in my throat -- at once eager for its conclusion, while not wanting it to end.
In lesser hands, this all gets melodramatic and overwrought; but, instead, McCann offers another brilliant book I won't be able to get out of my mind. -
How do you rate a book that both disappoints and at the very same time gives pleasure?
This book consists of one novella, having the same name as the title of the book, and three short stories:
1. What Time Is It Now? Where Are You?
2. Sh'khol (A Hebrew word for 'loss of a child')
3. Treaty
I have read just about all of McCann's books. I love his lines. How he expresses himself. Pure poetry in my ears. He looks at people and things and events and captures their essence through just a few words. Compassion, guilt, fear and understanding in the turn of a phrase. He keeps you thinking. He keeps you glued to the pages. So what am I saying? I love his writing. However there is more to a novel, novella or short story than the phrasing, the strings of words. There is plot. There is character development. There is the message conveyed. There is the beginning and the end and do all the parts hold together properly? All of this has to be accomplished well. No easy task. For me, only the last story worked on all accounts.
Before I had read Treaty I was terribly upset. Why? Because if you think an author is fantastic, you expect them to deliver. I wanted more than just wonderful lines; I expected well-structured stories with intriguing messages. I do expect more from a good writer.
In the novella every chapter starts with a stanza from Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I found the tie to the poem and the message of the novella to be weak. It is a mini-mystery. A murder? Manslaughter? Who did it and why? The characterizations are only skin deep. The ending leaves you totally up in the air, as does Sh'khol.
Sk'khol grabbed me at first. I felt the anxiety, the guilt and the main character's utter misery. Her deaf, mentally disabled adopted child had gone missing. She blamed herself. I would have too. Have you never bought clothes for your children to grow into... to save just a few dollars? Only here it was a neoprene swimsuit that shields the body from cold. But the ending was a huge let down. Not enough information is imparted. The ending is ridiculously abrupt. Again I was disappointed.
What Time Is It Now is about how an author writes a story, or at least how this author goes about it. This is interesting but you get only the rudiments of the process, an outline of a story, no character depth at all.
Then came the last story. It was perfect. In all ways. Wording, beginning and end. What a message! The last story is about a nun that was raped 37 years earlier and then one day she sees the rapist on TV. What does she do? What happens shows you who she is now and who the perpetrator had become - both the interior and exterior. What they showed the world and what they hid. So I was ready to forgive McCann. He delivered again, at least with one story.
There is an author's note at the end that speaks of how McCann was assaulted in 2014. What an author writes is always affected by their own life experiences. He acknowledges this. The topics covered in this book reflect his own inner turmoil, where he grew up (Ireland) and where he lives (NYC). The topics covered in the book are dark. There isn't much humor, but the author's note helps you understand the whole tone of the book.
The author narrates his own book. Parts were too quickly narrated. Parts were perfect. He didn't exaggerate; he let the lines come to the fore, which is just what I like. I like his soft tone. Pronunciation of foreign words was well done.
So three stars. I am glad I read the book, for the last story Treaty, and as usual I always love how this author puts together his words. There are little, little things like character names - Eileen because 'I lean' on Eileen. Or that sweat, no, not on the waitress but on the glass that she brought. Little things like this make me smile, make me think about how life really is. -
Thirteen Ways is really a novella about two ways of looking, at a life and death, in thirteen chapters. The even chapters are Mendelssohn’s internal monologues, reminiscences and conversations; the odd cones are the forensic commentary surrounding his death.
Who is he? Mendelssohn, (we never learn his first name) is an aging retired judge who is cared for by a live-in housekeeper Sally. His wife Eileen, who he misses deeply, died a few years earlier. The story builds over just a few hours as Mendelssohn ventures out on a rough, snowy winter day for lunch with his son Elliot at a favourite restaurant nearby, and from which he never returns. Elliott is preoccupied with his own problems, can’t even be bothered to properly talk to his father, and abruptly leaves after one of many phone calls.
In contrast, the odd chapters belong to the detectives, stretching from then until the end of the trial. Almost everything of that day appears to have been captured on video surveillance cameras (the “13 ways” may also be those cameras’ views) except that crucial details of the assault itself are tantalizingly obscure. There are several suspects of course, but one stands out and in the 13th chapter there is a trial, the jury is shown the video footage, and the novella ends with the verdict. No spoiler needed because that really is the end.
This is powerful stuff and I am blown away by what McCann did. His writing (he makes great use of sentence fragments to heighten a sense of intimacy and immediacy) is terse, yet passionate and sympathetic where he is voicing Mendelssohn - touched with love for his wife, affection for Sally and the restaurant staff, and bitter disappointment for his son. And then in the alternate chapters, the same techniques to present the deliberately remote and dispassionate voices of the detectives.
......
Thirteen Ways is rounded out by three short stories.
The first What time is it now, where you are? is kind of “meta” - and very short indeed: an author agrees to write a short story to a deadline, and develops his characters over the space of a few months. But as he becomes acquainted with them, they acquire their own reality that leaves him with more questions about their lives than he can possibly answer in such a short story. Nice.
Sh’khol is about the anguish of a mother for a son that she thinks has drowned. Here were same terse sentence fragment structures and intensity, but the effect for me was way too overwrought, and the mother and son did not come across as real people. I’m not sure what McCann was trying to say here.
And finally, Treaty. Beverly, a nun in her seventies, is confronted on TV one evening by the right-wing revolutionary who had kidnapped and raped her in South America, half a life earlier. Her abuser, Carlos, is now a respected human-rights negotiator for a group of miners, and she becomes obsessed with how he had managed to achieve such a state of grace, that had eluded her. Beverly goes to seek him out and when she finally confronts him, Carlos (who doesn’t initially recognize her) reveals through his language that he has not changed at all ...
“No peace about him. No great swerve in his life. He has polished all his lies”
... and realizing now that she could do anything to him and his reputation, Beverly decides to walk away; and in doing so, achieves a degree of reconciliation herself.
Treaty was a surprise, and not one that I thought I would have appreciated so much.
... At least 4 stars for this collection and 5 for the novella. -
"Poets, like detectives, know the truth is laborious: it doesn’t occur by accident, rather it is chiseled and worked into being, the product of time and distance and graft."
The scaffolding of the title story is Wallace Stevens' poem "
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - each stanza is the epigraph to the thirteen parts of the story, and each part in some (obscure) way pays homage to the poem (a famous one but completely unfamiliar to me). The story plays with different ways of seeing, both physically and mentally. Just the story alone, without the link to the poem, is fascinating both in its structure as well as the prose. McCann is like the poet in the quote above -- in his hands the words are a marvelous tool that carves the truth out of the story.
"Truthfully he was born in the middle of that first case when he stood in front of the Brooklyn court, a fresh-plucked assistant DA, and he shaped the words exactly the way he had dreamed, and they entered the air, and he could feel the way they fluttered, and what they did to the faces of all the all-male jury, and what they did, also, to the sympathetic judge who beamed with something akin to pride…
The short story "What Time is it Now, Where You Are?" was a delight. The narrator is a writer who had agreed in the spring to write a story for the New Year's edition of a magazine. About nine months time, I just realised. We get to watch the conception, gestation, and birth of the story.
"Sh'khol". This was masterful, a short story classic already. The suspense is further heightened on learning the meaning of the Hebrew word sh'khol. (First published in Zoetrope, it has been selected for Best American Short Stories 2015 and has won a 2016 Pushcart Prize).
I loved the first line of the last story, "Treaty": "She is falling, ever so faintly, into age." The course of the story swerves unexpectedly, so you never know where you are going, which is the best way to travel through a story!
This is a superb collection. I've read some of his other works, and especially enjoyed
Let the Great World Spin.
Thanks to Random House for this ARC ebook -- I'm looking forward to the release of this book, when I will buy my own real copy. -
The title of this new Colum McCann collection – one novella followed by three short stories – is unabashedly borrowed from Wallace Stevens’ haiku-like poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”…an exercise in varying perspectives that issue from the poet’s imagination.
It’s almost like a Rubik’s Cube: turn the author’s imagination this way and one thing will appear; turn it another way and something else comes to the surface. Yet every single movement centers around how we search for meaning, narrative, and grace in a world that may seem random.
In the novella, an octogenarian judge named Mendelssohn – same name as the gifted classical composer – arranges to meet his churlish son Elliot on what will be the last day of his life. Thirteen chapters – some narrating his progression through that fortuitous day, others focused on detectives who are, in effect, autopsying that day by cutting it into tiny slivers, introduces a host of minor characters with their own perspectives as this cacophony of melodies finally crescendos to the final true note. It’s a deceptively hard feat to pull off, and Mr. McCann does so beautifully.
In the shortest piece, “What Time is it Now, Where You Are?” the perspective of a writer (perhaps the author himself) is displayed, as we, the readers, become witness to the very art of creation and shifting perspectives.
Sh’khol, the next piece, centers on a mother spending Christmas in Galway with her deaf and often uncommunicative young son, who disappears around the time she is translating a beautifully written story by an Arab Israeli abut a middle-aged couple who lost their two children. Sh’khol – there is no relative word in other languages – defines a parent who has lost a child. Fact and fiction, the perspective expands to include both.
Finally, in Treaty, an elderly nun Beverly – brutally raped in her youth – catches a glimpse of her rapist, now a dignified peacekeeper, on TV. It is established that her memory is fading; what is the perspective? Is “Carlos” the same person who brutalized her in truth? How has he discovered grace? Who this man is depends on perspective.
This is a magnificent book without a false note. Absolutely a five-star read. -
3.5 stars
This collection consisting of a novella and 3 short stories is difficult to rate because the novella fell very differently with me than the stories. I'll divide this review accordingly.
Novella, "13 Ways of Looking" 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Superb! In pseudo-stream of consciousness style, McCann treats us to the final day of an elderly Jewish judge in New York, his mysterious death and beyond to his funeral.
Not only do we get the judge's POV but also that of key witnesses, family members, security cameras and the police. Sometimes these are mixed, drifting from one to the other as they interact, but mostly they stay in their own lane. Observations, memory, forgiveness, acceptance and the limitations of one's own POV are the themes. I think the ending could have been tightened by a page, but that is probably personal taste.
Highly enjoyable and very much worth reading!
3 short stories: "How Late Is It There Now Where You Are?," "Sh'kol" and "Peace" 2 stars ⭐⭐
Fans of Alice Munro will probably absolutely adore the 3 short stories in this collection.
I'm not a Munro fan.
I'm not a fan of stories that give you pages of tedious laundry lists of the characters' mundane movements around their kitchen and expect you to extrapolate huge drama and overwhelming insight from them. In short, the exact type of vague, "interpret as you will" modern short story that killed the general populace's interest in the genre that was so very strong once upon a time.
That seems to be McCann's downfall as a writer. Giving too much unnecessary detail that neither characterises nor moves the plot forward and not giving us enough insight to adequately understand the characters' sometime vague actions.
I'll admit, I was so bored with the final two stories that I skimmed the second half of the last one just to get it over with. (So no careful reading there. Bad reader!📏)
Don't get me wrong, the writing is quite good! But I found the story material of the first two stories overdone -- topics: writer anxiety and parental freak out when a handicapped teen goes missing -- and the last one, while important material -- topic: the sexual abuse of nuns at the hands of S. American guerilla groups -- inadequately handled.
Others will certainly have different readings of these.
Altogether: amazingly good novella, disappointing tedious and overly long stories. -
This is the first I’ve read from McCann, and it’s terrific. The title novella starts off as the simple story of J. Mendelssohn, an octogenarian who wakes up on a snowy morning in his New York City apartment, contemplating his past – Lithuanian/Polish ancestry, work as a judge and marriage to Eileen, whom he met as a boy in Dublin – and planning to meet his son at a restaurant for lunch. But all of a sudden it turns into a murder mystery on page 24: “Later the homicide detectives will be surprised…” In 13 sections headed by epigraphs from the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” McCann flits through Mendelssohn’s thoughts and flips between the events preceding and immediately following the murder. A late interrogation scene is particularly strong – “unlike our poetry, we like our murders to be fully solved.” He stuffs so much plot and characterization into not many pages. Mendelssohn’s thought life is rich with allusions and wordplay. I was particularly intrigued to read about the autobiographical overlap in the Author’s Note. (4.5 for the novella alone.)
“What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” repeats the 13-section framework. It’s a story about writing a story – trying to figure out the scope and the backstories for all the characters. It was my least favorite of the four in this volume, though I did like how part 13 was composed entirely of questions. “Sh’khol” beautifully blends elements that don’t sound like they should go together: motherhood of a deaf adopted son, a Galway coastal setting, the selkie myth, and translating from the Hebrew. In “Treaty,” an elderly nun is reminded of her traumatic experience as a prisoner in South America when she has a fresh encounter with her abuser. This is a recurring theme in the book: how the traces of random violence linger with us. -
This is a quite wonderful story; I only wish there were more of it. Or that the publishers had had the balls to publish it on its own, without the accompanying three stories which act as a distraction from the main event. If this was published in the same way as Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, everybody would be aware of just how a perfect thing it is.
