This Side of Brightness

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Overview

At the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs—black, white, Irish, Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.

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More About This Book

Overview

At the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs—black, white, Irish, Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
Called "New York's most visible up-and-coming Irish writer" by the New York Times, McCann skillfully evokes early 20th-century New York, where Irish mixed with African Americans and Italians to dig the tunnel under the East River.
David Willis McCullough
This Side of Brightness is a similarly deft feat of balance and fancy footwork. It is also a disturbingly beautiful portrait of a family whose dreams are never quite able to stave off the painful reality of their circumstances, a portrait that ends without sentimentality and yet with renewed hope.
— New York Times Book Review
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
An ambitious, idiosyncratic, moving saga of immigrant life by Irish expatriate McCann (stories: Fishing the Sloe-black River, 1996; Songdogs, 1994, etc.). Writing in a prose of considerable allusive power, McCann ingeniously uses the NYC subway as a central symbol. In 1916, the excavation of subway tunnels gives immigrant Con O'Leary a chance at a decent job, otherwise denied to recent Irish arrivals. Among his fellow "sandhogs" is Nathan Walker, a young black man also determined to secure some part of the alluring American Dream. When O'Leary dies in one of the frequent cave-ins afflicting the massive project, Walker elects to help his devastated widow and young daughter. Over the succeeding years, a complex affection draws Nathan and Con's daughter Eleanor together, and eventually, despite the considerable risks involved, they marry. In a brisk narrative spanning eight decades, McCann finds in the struggles and fates of Eleanor and Nathan's descendants a vivid outline of the experiences of outcasts and immigrants in American society. In a sharply ironic touch the subway tunnels that had been, for Con and Nathan, a way into the mainstream have become, by the 1980's, a home for those on society's far fringes. Treefrog, a homeless man who's taken shelter beneath Riverside Park, has been so worn down by his social exile that he's uncertain of his past and his own name. McCann further stresses the increasing harshness of modern life by juxtaposing his depiction of Treefrog's impoverished, hallucinatory existence against some transcendent images of the natural world, including, most memorably, a recurrent image of a flock of cranes. A poet's version of a family saga, mingling originaland persuasive imagery with a story of great dramatic impactþand an angry, convincing criticism of the manner in which American society has repeatedly frustrated the attempts of outsiders to make a home. A haunting novel, by a writer emerging as a major talent (First printing of 35,000; Book-of-the-Month alternate selection; author tour)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312421977
  • Publisher: Picador
  • Publication date: 12/18/2002
  • Edition description: First Edition
  • Pages: 304
  • Sales rank: 215,234
  • Product dimensions: 5.47 (w) x 8.26 (h) x 0.82 (d)

Meet the Author

Colum McCann
Colum McCann

Colum McCann is the author of the highly acclaimed Songdogs and Fishing the Sloe-Black River, which received the Hennessey Award for Best First Fiction, Ireland's top literary honor. He lives in New York City.

First Chapter

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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 5 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 5 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted September 8, 2009

    Very Interesting Book about a Religion I didn't know much about

    This is a very interesting, but also very scary book. At times it was confusing to keep the players straight, so I read it through, then read it again with a note pad to understand it all -- the timeline, characters, different sects, etc. it was a good book group read since I could get other peoples opinions.

    It did not know much about Mormons except they liked plural marriages, and what I'd read in the papers about the high-profile cases involving the fundamentalists. This book appears to go into the entire history of the religion, from it's very beginnings to the present. It discusses not only the fundamentalists but the mainstream Mormons also, giving you a good overview.

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 22, 2005

    Plot? Character development?

    This book lacks both, but does contain clunky prose, awkward phrasing, and predictable plot lines. Read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks if you want to read about tunnelers.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 17, 2002

    Dark, Poetic, Powerful

    Simply the best book I have read in years -- dark, challenging, redemptive, profound and quite simply a good read. As an African-American myself, I was surprised to find out he was not

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 21, 2001

    Beautiful

    Just wonderful. The language, the imagery, the human emotion. Dramatic, yes, but the emotions are real. The depiction of worlds and times previously unknown in such a personal intimate way really drew me in and I believed it all existed as he said! As incredible and romanticized as it all was. My new favorite book and I think it will be for awhile...

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 6, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

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