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Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories

by Colum McCann

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24613107,795 (3.83)66
One powerful novella, with two thematically linked short stories on either side of it, forms the basis of Everything in this Country Must. These are stories about Ireland and the Troubles, but only in the sense that Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing ¿ they have an almost mythical rather than a political feel. In the title story, 4 young soldiers help a farmer and his daughter free their horse from a stream in flood, unable to understand that their help will never be anything but an insult. In the novella, Hunger Strike, a young boy and his mother flee to Galway as the boy's uncle succumbs to a hunger strike in a Derry gaol. In Wood, a ten-year-old boy is asked by his mother to make poles for the marching season. These stories don't have a political purpose, they are almost three memories, three moments in time that changed the course of lives from innocence to something else.… (more)
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» See also 66 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
I enjoyed this, but after some years since reading it, I don't recall enough to discuss it. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 13, 2023 |
A fine collection. I preferred the title story best, but the novella was heartfelt if a little prolonged towards its inevitable conclusion. ( )
  jscape2000 | Jun 28, 2019 |
McCann has a terrible gift with the words, so he does. This collection of two short stories and a novella is powerful, disturbing, brilliant but ultimately unsatisfying for me. The title selection has a straightforward beginning, middle and end, which I confess to admiring. But the ending, which I certainly saw coming, does not make sense to me on an emotional level. I knew as soon as the soldiers succeeded in saving Father's favorite draft horse from drowning that Father would have to kill it. The story allows for no other outcome. But I will simply never understand a person destroying the thing he loves because it has been sullied in his mind by the actions of someone else. The second selection, "Wood", is beautifully crafted and I was sailing right along with it...right up to the moment McCann dropped me in mid-air. Beginning and middle...no end. Star off. The novella, "Hunger Strike', is the most difficult and heart-wrenching of the three. An Irish teen and his mother attempt to cope from a distance with his uncle's hunger strike during the troubles. Although the boy has never met his uncle, he feels a great connection to him and his struggle. I wished for a better grasp of the politics while reading this one; Irish history has always confused me a bit, and I need to get it clear in my head. I suspect this story of a subtlety I was not quite equipped to appreciate, but I still found it moving and enlightening. Recommended. ( )
  laytonwoman3rd | Jan 3, 2019 |
The novella and two stories in this slim book are set in Ireland and peripherally deal with The Troubles. Each features a teenaged protagonist hose life is somehow affected by the lingering residue of the hatred between Catholics and Protestants. In "Wood," young Sam and his mother must hide from his blind father the contribution they are making to a political march. The title story depicts the confusion of a girl whose father would rather lose his draft horse than owe a debt of gratitude to the British soldiers who try to save it. And in "Hunger Strike," a coming-of-age story, a boy rages against the disruption caused by the family moving from north to south for 'safety.' Always in the background, always presuring the foreground are the ongoing religious and political divisions that plague the Irish. A very fast read, but--as usual--McCann's lyrical prose demands close attention. ( )
  Cariola | Jun 18, 2014 |
These two stories and novella astounded me. McCann manages to evoke clear cut characters and images with minimal descriptions in each of these works. All of them revolve around the Troubles, which I found especially interesting since I just read his latest novel, "Transatlantic", a short time ago. Lyrical, moving and beautifully written. ( )
1 vote nmele | Jan 31, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
The two stories and novella that make up Colum McCann's very slim ''Everything in This Country Must'' seem to be a way of dealing with Ireland's sectarian conflict by coming at it sideways. That's not to say McCann has chosen the route of fable or metaphor. The battles between Protestant and Roman Catholic are alluded to in these three selections, but the characters seem to experience it all from a distance, or as part of a past that sits in the midst of their day-to-day experience like a lump of dry bread in the throat, impossible to digest or ignore.
 
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Epigraph
Horses buried for years

Under the foundations

Give their earthen floors

The ease of trampolines.

Paul Muldoon, Dancers at the Moy
Dedication
For Isabella and John Michael
First words
A summer flood came and our draft horse got caught in the river.
Quotations
"...I was shivering and wet and cold and scared because Stevie and the draft horse were going to die since everything in this country must."
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (1)

One powerful novella, with two thematically linked short stories on either side of it, forms the basis of Everything in this Country Must. These are stories about Ireland and the Troubles, but only in the sense that Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing ¿ they have an almost mythical rather than a political feel. In the title story, 4 young soldiers help a farmer and his daughter free their horse from a stream in flood, unable to understand that their help will never be anything but an insult. In the novella, Hunger Strike, a young boy and his mother flee to Galway as the boy's uncle succumbs to a hunger strike in a Derry gaol. In Wood, a ten-year-old boy is asked by his mother to make poles for the marching season. These stories don't have a political purpose, they are almost three memories, three moments in time that changed the course of lives from innocence to something else.

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Book description
Contents:
  • Everything in This Country Must
  • Wood
  • Hunger Strike
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Colum McCann is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.

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Colum McCann chatted with LibraryThing members from Mar 1, 2010 to Mar 14, 2010. Read the chat.

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