Synopses & Reviews
In such acclaimed novels as Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, National
Book Award–winning author Colum McCann has transfixed readers with his
precision, tenderness, and authority. Now, in his first collection of
short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of
chance, and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest
moments.
“As it was, it was like being set down in the
best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned
around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.”
In the exuberant title novella, a retired judge reflects on his life’s
work, unaware as he goes about his daily routines that this particular
morning will be his last. In “Sh’khol,” a mother spending Christmas
alone with her son confronts the unthinkable when he disappears while
swimming off the coast near their home in Ireland. In “Treaty,” an
elderly nun catches a snippet of a news report in which it is revealed
that the man who once kidnapped and brutalized her is alive,
masquerading as an agent of peace. And in “What Time Is It Now, Where
You Are?” a writer constructs a story about a Marine in Afghanistan
calling home on New Year’s Eve.
Deeply personal, subtly subversive, at times harrowing, and indeed funny, yet also full of comfort, Thirteen Ways of Looking
is a striking achievement. With unsurpassed empathy for his characters
and their inner lives, Colum McCann forges from their stories a profound
tribute to our search for meaning and grace. The collection is a
rumination on the power of storytelling in a world where language and
memory can sometimes falter, but in the end do not fail us, and a
contemplation of the healing power of literature.
Review
“In just three short stories and one novella, McCann weaves the magic that made Let the Great World Spin
so acclaimed — especially in one brilliant short piece of metafiction in
which the process of writing a story becomes interwoven with the story
created.” The Huffington Post
Review
“McCann’s characters in this new work — whether nuns or judges or
writers — are mostly ordinary people encountering extraordinary situations
often touched by loss. Powerful, profound, and deeply empathetic,
McCann’s beautifully wrought writing in Thirteen Ways of Looking glides off the page.” BuzzFeed
Review
“McCann is a writer of power and subtlety and beauty....The powerful
title story loiters in the mind long after you’ve read it.” Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
About the Author
Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs,
as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has
been published in thirty-five languages. He has received many honors,
including the National Book Award, the International IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award, a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres award from the
French government, and the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in
Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire’s “Best and Brightest,” and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review,
he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing program. He lives
in New York City with his wife and their three children, and he is the
cofounder of the global nonprofit story exchange organization, Narrative
4.