The eponymous first story in this four-story collection is a fictional, first person retrospective of the life of a Brooklyn judge in his old age through the filter of his physical decline and dementia, all taking place on the last day of his life before his murder. While I can relate to the setting in Manhattan, having spent time in the city over the years, it’s not the storyline or setting that I find appealing. Rather it’s the stream of conscious, staccato delivery of McCann’s writing. He delivers from the protagonist a play-by-play riverine flood of thoughts and feelings from his long life, triggered by what he’s experiencing in each current moment. I could do without McCann’s vulgarity, which is not necessary for a story like this to unfold. I found an occasional pithy insight that lingers. Like this one, as Mr. Mendelssohn contemplates his abundance of free time: “Odd thing, time. So much of it now and we spend it all looking back.” We all have an inner dialogue playing on loop inside our heads. Much of it we wouldn’t share with anyone. It’s compelling to see McCann explore this voice in this story. ( )

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING is a collection of four short stories. The first and title one is more of a novella, a verse at the beginning of each chapter builds into a complete poem.
The story is about an a former judge, now in his nineties, who is not happy with his current life situation, somewhat infirm and dependent on a aide for many of his needs. He doesn’t know that it will be his last day of life. It’s almost like an onion, peeling off layers to get to the core except that the chapters alternate between what is going on at the time and what was happening to him before hand. Each one reveals more of the whole story. The layout works very well.
The story has wit: When he decides he wants to go to a restaurant, the aide asks, “You made a reservation.” He doesn’t respond but thinks, “I do indeed have a reservation, Sally, though truth be told it’s more with your grammar, not the restaurant.”
An interesting quote: Thinking about his current life and past, he thinks, “The more we know of time, the less we have of it. The less we have, the more we want. The scales of justice.”
The second story “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” is about a man writing a short story for a magazine’s New Year’s Eve edition. He finally settles on a Marine in Afghanistan, away from home on New Year’s Eve, wanting to call his mother. His thoughts wander as he imagines what his life is like for him and other people around him, particularly one female Marine and his past life..
The third, “Sh’khol” takes place in Ireland where a mother is spending Christmas with her son when he disappears while swimming.
The final one, “Treaty,” causes a nun to revisit a very unpleasant part of her past and has to deal with both it and the present.
All the stories are well-written and provide much to think about. ( )

It seemed ridiculous to read this latest Colum McCann book first, when I've meant to read Let The Great World Spin for years, but it was so good that I can't regret it, and now maybe I'll be motivated to take on that earlier, longer work. The novella and three short stories in Thirteen Ways of Looking each deliver their heartbreak slowly, and refuse to yield the tidy resolution or bad guy comeuppance that one might naturally crave. They are, nonetheless, eminently satisfying for the complete small portraits that they are, and the linguistically dazzling way that McCann paints them. I am in awe, and also still chewing on aspects of the structure and layers of meaning that McCann scatters like breadcrumbs throughout. ( )

What to say? This story of an old man mulling his life and current situation was clever, and kept me reading, and had a reasonable resolution, but it was more like a puzzle to be solved than a satisfying read. As he did in Let the Great World Spin, he alternates point and time of view, so that part of the ending is telegraphed well in advance. I liked the use of Wallace Steven's '13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' poem to set off the chapters, but that's mostly because I love Stevens.

I grabbed this volume at the library because I had heard McCann speak last year and so was interested in the results he spoke of. There are several short stories in the volume that I might also read, but there's something about McCann's writing that floats away from me. Can't quite put my finger on it. Anyone else have a thought about his writing? ( )

The novella steals the show, breathtaking. ( )