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TransAtlantic: A Novel by Colum McCann
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TransAtlantic: A Novel (original 2013; edition 2013)

by Colum McCann

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,8121689,298 (3.98)349
Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

In the National Book Award–winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called “an emotional tour de force.” Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.
 
Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators—Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown—set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War.
 
Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave.
 
New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.
 
These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory.
 
The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with each passing year.

Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.
 
“A dazzlingly talented author’s latest high-wire act . . . Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham, TransAtlantic is Colum McCann’s most penetrating novel yet.”O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“One of the greatest pleasures of TransAtlantic is how provisional it makes history feel, how intimate, and intensely real. . . . Here is the uncanny thing McCann finds again and again about the miraculous: that it is inseparable from the everyday.”The Boston Globe
 
“Ingenious . . . The intricate connections [McCann] has crafted between the stories of his women and our men [seem] written in air, in water, and—given that his subject is the confluence of Irish and American history—in blood.”Esquire
 
“Another sweeping, beautifully constructed tapestry of life . . . Reading McCann is a rare joy.”The Seattle Times
 
...
… (more)
Member:Microlinda
Title:TransAtlantic: A Novel
Authors:Colum McCann
Info:Random House (2013), Hardcover, 320 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (2013)

  1. 60
    Brooklyn by Colm TĂłibĂ­n (Othemts)
  2. 52
    Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (suniru)
  3. 10
    A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle (Othemts)
  4. 10
    The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (zhejw)
    zhejw: Both books explore human connections made across multiple generations and across oceans while ultimately concluding in Ireland.
  5. 00
    Everyone is Watching by Megan Bradbury (charl08)
  6. 00
    Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission by Stephen Puleo (Othemts)
    Othemts: Both books focus on the relationships between the US and Ireland, with the visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland a key feature of each book.
  7. 14
    A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Othemts)
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» See also 349 mentions

English (165)  German (1)  Spanish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (168)
Showing 1-5 of 165 (next | show all)
Disappointing. I really enjoyed Let the Great World Spin but I just couldn't get interested in TransAtlantic. The story dragged for me. ( )
  ellink | Jan 22, 2024 |
Stitching realistic fiction to historic fact McCann creates a vibrant narrative of intimate beauty. Like many of the characters, my father traveled from Northern Ireland to Canada, so their stories touch my own. But the universal qualities of surprise connection, stumbling through life in survival mode, striving for freedom, or shaping it from shreds of loss and betrayal invite any reader into the saga.

My heart pounded as if in the open cockpit in an early description of flight. Mid-way through my attention flagged but I re-engaged as the narrative loop swung round and I began to see the intersection of stories. Along with the sensuous (full of the senses) fabric of the work, it is the small cast of ordinary (but extraordinary) women, all related, that made this such a satisfying read. ( )
  rebwaring | Aug 14, 2023 |
This was not a poorly written book by any means, it was just boring as hell.
( )
  myshkin77 | Aug 10, 2023 |
If you're looking for a light read or a happy ending, turn back! This is most definitely an Irish book, which means you need to prepare yourself in advance for perverse twists of fate, bleak humor, and tragedy. So why do I keep reading Irish books? Because Irish authors tend to be brilliant storytellers, creating vivid tales full of heartbreaking humanity and lyric beauty. I wish I could say that that's what happened here, but I can't.

I simply couldn't find any emotional resonance in the story arcs of the characters in this novel. Perhaps because of the story's scope and episodic nature, readers aren't given a lot of time to get to know each of the characters before we're whisked away to another time, another country, another generation. (To be clear, McCann gives us plenty of backstory; just not a lot of emotional depth to go with it.) Horrible things happen to each character that I know *should* have evoked sympathy (trigger warning: the children in this tale are particularly prone to ghastly ends), but mostly they just evoked horror because I never felt like these events were happening to real people. (With one exception: there's this bit with a woman and a baby on a road that will haunt me for a while.) Which is ironic, because at least two of the characters in this novel - Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, and Senator George Mitchell, the politician who helped bring to an end Ireland's ghastly Troubles - are, of course, actual historic personages. But 300 pages later, I can't say I feel like this tale deepened my understanding of either.

Which is not to say that this book lacks literary merit - especially McCann's affecting exploration the nature of slavery in all its manifestations: literal slavery (Frederick Douglass), political slavery (Ireland under English rule), social slavery (England's class system), economic slavery (the desperate plight of Irish peasants), cultural oppression, gender oppression, even the emotional slavery of grief. Some of the most memorable moments in the tale are when Frederick Douglass, touring through Ireland to raise support for the abolitionist cause, comes to realize just how many forms of slavery and oppression there are in this world.

I've read a number of reviews talking about how the vignettes in this novel are bound together by generations of Irish women, but I'd argue the real glue that binds this together is the eponymous transatlantic journey that McCann recounts in the first chapter. Because, in the end, I feel like this novel is very much about the lessons that the pilots learn in the course of their perilous passage from Newfoundland to Ireland: that sometimes in life you're going to have to navigate by dead reckoning; that the only way to survive a spin is to maintain speed and ride it out; and that sometimes winning is about enduring adversity rather than triumphing over it. Valid life lessons to be sure, but in this instance, not enough to capture my empathy or imagination. ( )
  Dorritt | Feb 4, 2023 |
Reading this book was like riding a roller coaster of emotions. Prior to claiming it off the library hold list I was excited about tackling it, having read some very positive reviews. As I started reading it, my excitement diminished page by page as I struggled to understand why the story jumped around in time and place, from Newfoundland in the years after World War I to Ireland in the 1840s to Missouri in the late 19th century. Each stop seemed completely unrelated to the one that came before, and the one that followed. I began to wonder how on earth this disjointed mess had earned such lavish praise.

Then, finally, I realized that what had seemed to be completely unrelated chapters were actually tied together through the family lines of one woman, Lily Duggan, who is a maid in a fancy Dublin home when former slave Frederick Douglass comes to Ireland to encourage the Irish to support the American abolition movement. Each chapter had somewhere at its heart a descendant of Lily, from the Civil War mother who helps her husband run an ice-cutting empire in the American Midwest to the journalist who chronicles one of the first transatlantic flights to the woman who loses everything in contemporary Ireland.

Once I found the common thread, my interest and appreciation for the book picked up. I enjoyed most the chapters devoted to Douglass' sojourn in Ireland and a visit more than a century later by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, trying desperately to bring together Catholics and Protestants to form a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. None of the stories end in triumph; the most we can hope for, McCann implies, is a sense of quiet satisfaction and no expectation of glory. Many of the characters do not even achieve that minor grace, and my heart ached for some of their stories and lives.

Although by the end I was appreciating McCann's cleverness and deft interweaving of timelines and placelines, I just can't give this book my highest recommendation. I don't need or want to be hit over the head with an anvil by an author trying to convey the themes he will explore, but to read roughly a third of a book without having any idea where it's going seemed a shade too opaque for any but the most dedicated English major used to parsing meaning from prose. ( )
  rosalita | Nov 9, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 165 (next | show all)
"But a book as ambitious and wide-ranging as this is bound to be a little inconsistent, and its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses."
added by bookfitz | editNew York Times, Erica Wagner (Jun 20, 2013)
 
"His new novel, TransAtlantic, likewise dramatises Irish-American encounters, and once again features elements of nonfiction, and a gravity-defying central metaphor."
added by bookfitz | editThe Guardian, Theo Tait (Jun 1, 2013)
 
Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2013: McCann’s stunning sixth novel is a brilliant tribute to his loamy, lyrical and complicated Irish homeland, and an ode to the ties that, across time and space, bind Ireland and America. The book begins with three transatlantic crossings, each a novella within a novel: Frederick Douglas’s 1845 visit to Ireland; the 1919 flight of British aviators Alcock and Brown; and former US senator George Mitchell’s 1998 attempt to mediate peace in Northern Ireland. ... The language is lush, urgent, chiseled and precise; sometimes languid, sometimes kinetic. At times, it reads like poetry, or a dream. Choppy sentences. Two-word declaratives. Arranged into stunning, jagged tableaux. Bleak, yet hopeful. ... The finale is a melancholy set piece that ties it all together... McCann reminds us that life is hard, and it is a wonder, and there is hope. --Neal Thompson
added by JSWBooks | editAmazon.com, Neal Thompson (pay site) (Jun 1, 2013)
 
"A masterful and profoundly moving novel that employs exquisite language to explore the limits of language and the tricks of memory."
added by bookfitz | editKirkus Reviews (Apr 15, 2013)
 

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Epigraph
No history is mute. No matter howmuch they own
it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to
shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the
time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.

-Eduardo Galeano
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to Loretta Brennan Glucksman.
For Allison, and Isabella too.
And, of course, for Brendan Bourke.
First words
The cottage sat at the edge of the lough.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

In the National Book Award–winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called “an emotional tour de force.” Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.
 
Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators—Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown—set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War.
 
Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave.
 
New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.
 
These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory.
 
The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with each passing year.

Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.
 
“A dazzlingly talented author’s latest high-wire act . . . Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham, TransAtlantic is Colum McCann’s most penetrating novel yet.”O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“One of the greatest pleasures of TransAtlantic is how provisional it makes history feel, how intimate, and intensely real. . . . Here is the uncanny thing McCann finds again and again about the miraculous: that it is inseparable from the everyday.”The Boston Globe
 
“Ingenious . . . The intricate connections [McCann] has crafted between the stories of his women and our men [seem] written in air, in water, and—given that his subject is the confluence of Irish and American history—in blood.”Esquire
 
“Another sweeping, beautifully constructed tapestry of life . . . Reading McCann is a rare joy.”The Seattle Times
 
...

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