This Side of Brightness: A Novel

This Side of Brightness: A Novel

by Colum McCann
This Side of Brightness: A Novel

This Side of Brightness: A Novel

by Colum McCann

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Overview

From the author of Songdogs, a magnificent work of imagination and history set in the tunnels of New York City.

In the early years of the century, Nathan Walker leaves his native Georgia for New York City and the most dangerous job in America. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Above ground, the sandhogs--black, white, Irish, Italian--keep their distance from each other until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow diggers--a bond that will bless and curse the next three generations.

Years later, Treefrog, a homeless man driven below by a shameful secret, endures a punishing winter in his subway nest. In tones ranging from bleak to disturbingly funny, Treefrog recounts his strategies of survival--killing rats, scavenging for discarded soda cans, washing in the snow. Between Nathan Walker and Treefrog stretch seventy years of ill-fated loves and unintended crimes.

In a triumph of plotting, the two stories fuse to form a tale of family, race, and redemption that is as bold and fabulous as New York City itself. In This Side of Brightness, Colum McCann confirms his place in the front ranks of modern writers.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466848702
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 06/25/2013
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Colum McCann is the author of books including This Side of Brightness, Zoli, Songdogs and Let the Great World Spin. He has received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and was named the first winner of the Grace Kelly Memorial Foundation Award and the Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

1991

On the evening before the first snow fell, he saw a large bird frozen in the waters of the Hudson River. He knew it must have been a goose or a heron, but he decided that it was a crane. Its neck was tucked under its wingpit and the head was submerged in the river. He peered down at the water's surface and imagined the ancient ornamental beak. The bird's legs were spread out and one wing was uncurled as if it had been attempting to fly through ice.

Treefrog found some bricks at the edge of the path that ran along the waterfront, lifted them high, and flung them down around the bird. The first brick bounced and skidded on the ice, but the second broke the surface and animated the crane for just a moment. The wings skipped minutely. The neck moved in a stiff, majestic arc and the head emerged from under the water, gray and bloated. He rained the bricks down with ferocious intent until the bird was free to move beyond the ice to where the river flowed.

Tipping his sunglasses up on his forehead, Treefrog watched the bird float away. He knew it would sink to the sands of the Hudson or get frozen in the ice once more, but he turned his back and walked away through the empty park. He kicked at some litter, touched the icy bark of a crab-apple tree, reached the tunnel entrance, and removed both his overcoats. He squeezed his way into a gap in the iron gate and crawled through.

The tunnel was wide and dark and familiar. There was no sound. Treefrog walked along the railway tracks until he came to a large concrete column. He touched the column with both hands and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust; then he grabbed onto a handhold and, with spectacular strength, hauled himself up. He walked along the beam with perfect balance, reached another catwalk, and shunted himself upward once more.

In his dark nest, high in the tunnel, Treefrog lit a small fire of twigs and newspaper. It was late evening. A train rumbled in the distance.

A few pellets of ratshit had collected on the bedside table, and he swept them off before opening the table drawer. From the depths of the drawer Treefrog took out a small purple jewelry bag, undid the yellow string. For a moment he warmed the harmonica in his gloved fist above the fire. He put it to his mouth, tested its warmth, and pulled in a net of tunnel air. The Hohner slipped along his lips. His tongue flickered in against the reeds, and the tendons in his neck shone. He felt the music was breathing him, asserting itself through him. A vision of his daughter whipped up--she was there, she was listening, she was part of his music, she sat with her knees tucked up to her chest and rocked back and forth in childish ecstasy--and he thought once again of the frozen crane in the river.

Sitting there, in his nest, in the miasmic dark, Treefrog played, transforming the air, giving back to the tunnels their original music.

What People are Saying About This

Frank McCourt

This is a novel about New York City, and love, interracial marriage, sandhogs that dig tunnels, men who build skyscrapers, dancing on being hundreds of feet above the city, even more, it is perhaps the first authentic novel about homelessness, about living below and beyond the city. And you know Colum McCann has been there: in language that makes you claw yourself with pleasure, he powerfully evokes the stink of the present and the poignancy of the past.

Jim Harrison

A splendid novel...I got my tired heart wrung in my soul well-healed. I don't recall a writer of McCann's generation who has so strongly swept me away.

Tom Kelly

Whether he is describing the brutal grace of sandhogs on a job or the tragic arc of family over the course of the American century, Colum McCann doesn't hit one false note. You read him and weep, for he has talent to burn.

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