Description
Book Synopsis‘McCann returns to Ireland with this collection, turning his measured gaze and incisive prose to the country’s recent history with devastating effect’ Maggie O’Farrell
'McCann once again shows why he is one of the best writers in the world … Deeply moving and powerfully written, these are likely to become classics' Big Issue ___________________ One powerful novella, with two thematically linked short stories on either side of it, forms the basis of
Everything in This Country Must. Although these are stories about Ireland and the Troubles, they have an almost mythical rather than a political feel. In the title story, four 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.
___________________ '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
Trade ReviewThese 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
Excellent – this is a powerful and moving collection * Roddy Doyle *
Orwell would have been proud to journey with a writer as good as Colum McCann * Sunday Independent *
McCann once again shows why he is one of the best writers in the world … Deeply moving and powerfully written, these are likely to become classics * Big Issue *
Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age * Los Angeles Times Book Review *
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
Full of wild melancholy -- Christopher Hope
