It's been said that McCann is unable to write a bad sentence, and this brief collection is further evidence of his remarkable gifts as prose artist as well as storyteller. The author of two novels, including last year's This Side of Brightness and Fishing the Sloe-Black River, a short story collection, McCann has chosen to set these stories in contemporary Ireland. While "the troubles" may be at the heart of the book, McCann wisely places the characters on the periphery. Nonetheless, each finds his life torn apart, both literally and more subtly, by the violence that emanates from the political tragedy. "Hunger Strike," the novella, is a beautiful fugue interweaving the difficult but rich days of a 13-year-old boy whose uncle is jailed up North, dying on a hunger strike. In each of the pieces, the miracle is how McCann, with prose so terse and spare, is able to create worlds so emotionally complex and moving. While it is delightful to have a new McCann book, one does wonder at the wisdom of publishing such a slight book at such a hefty price. Couldn't the publishers have waited a wee bit longer until there was a little more McCann to share?--Brian Kenney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
YA-Fear, loss, and violence are as elemental as air and water in the lives of the three teenagers featured, one by one, in these short, brilliant selections. They are growing up in Northern Ireland, where everything from death to a difference of opinion can irretrievably cut families off from one another. Alliance is a constant theme: is the girl in the title story a traitor when she's thankful to the British soldiers who rescued her father's horse from a flooding river? Her mother and brother were killed in an unpunished "accident" with a British military truck. In "Wood," a boy and his mother surreptitiously fashion wooden poles to be used in a Protestant march, knowing that his father-a woodworker debilitated by a stroke-would be deeply hurt by their participation. "Hunger Strike" captures with wrenching beauty a boy's struggle to decide with whom to ally himself: with his mother, who has moved them from the north to the south in order to protect him; or with the uncle he's never met, a key figure in a much-publicized hunger strike. McCann uses simple words in simple sentences, each as clear and pure as if carved in ice. Their restraint is palpable, skillfully reflecting the uneasy restraint of the teenagers as they struggle not to choke on the daily news. It may help YAs to have a bit of a background in the history of the Troubles, for McCann never spells them out (for example, he doesn't say why hunger strikes are taking place). The stories, however, stand on their own as documents of political and personal struggle everywhere.-Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
When you read Colum McCann's [Everything in This Country Must,] you'll know what it is to hear a symphony without instruments.”
—The Washington Post
“[McCann] shows off all his talents here. . . .[Will] keep readers amazed and near tears.”
—Publishers Weekly
“These are powerful stories—gritty, memorable and ambitious. The novella goes straight to the heart, both in terms of its theme and its emotional punch.”
—Edna O'Brien
“There is no denying the discipline that has gone into Everything in This Country Must.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“[S]tunning. . . .Told in McCann's lush prose, these stories are both mesmerizing and painful.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“McCann has the knack of capturing the intensity of these strongly held views in a low-key prose that underscores their vitriol, and in a way that disturbs the reader's sensibilities.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“[McCann] packs more passion and heartbreak into these two stories and novella. . . .than most writers can generate in books three times the length.”
—Kirkus
“Beautifully, poetically written. . .the need to read them over and over again can't be denied.”
—Booklist
“Further evidence of McCann's remarkable gifts as a prose artist as well as storyteller. . . .In each of these pieces, the miracle is how McCann, with prose so terse and spare, is able to create worlds so emotionally complex and moving.”
—Library Journal
“Few contemporary writers are better at extracting the sublime from the base.”
—The Guardian
“Colum McCann's stories are brooding, meditative and lyrically controlled to that delicate point where the emotion within them intensifies with each succeeding reading and recognition. The political turmoil of Northern Ireland finds here an answering, subtly respondent voice—wonderfully skilled and deeply felt.”
—Seamus Deane, author of Reading in the Dark
“Excellent—this is a powerful and moving collection.”
—Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha