- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Orion (Jun 12 1995)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1897580185
- ISBN-13: 978-1897580189
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Irish writer McCann's first novel is a powerful, sometimes mesmerizing commentary on the nature of family and identity, memory and loss. The story opens with 23-year-old narrator Conor Lyons, just returned to Ireland after a five-year trip abroad, spying on his father fly-fishing in a polluted river. The narrative goes on to detail the young man's week-long visit home, a sojourn that proves important primarily in how it relates to, and evokes, the past?beginning with a reconstruction of the father's life as a photographer and adventurer wandering first through war-wracked Spain and then through Mexico, where he meets and marries Conor's mother. The couple moves to the U.S. and on to Ireland, where the narrator is born. Conor's parents have a turbulent marriage, ending in the mother's mysterious disappearance when Conor is 12; it was to retrace his parents' travels, hoping to find his missing mother, that Conor left his homeland. Focusing on remembrance, McCann links events by mood as much as by date, employing prose of a poetic logic and musical cadence that binds transitions of character, time and place into a cogent melody and pattern. Toward novel's end, we begin to see that Conor's search for his mother in the territory of the past is as futile as his father's quest for a giant fish in a dead river. In a moving climax, the author illustrates that it is the quest for, rather than the attainment of, personal grails that defines and redeems us as individuals.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
This first novel by a young Irish writer living in America is a sad, even grim tale of a boy's search for an explanation for the disintegration of his family. Conor Lyons goes to Ireland as a young adult and stays for a time with his father, who now lives in dreary, unkempt circumstances. He tries to discover why his Mam left the family when he was a boy. Part of the mystery seems to lie in the erotic images his father, a wandering photographer, had made of Mam when she was young. The awkward, painful understanding between father and son is the best part of the novel, which, despite almost unrelieved wretchedness, shows considerable promise. For larger collections.
Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Searching for Mom,
By
This review is from: Songdogs: A Novel (Paperback)
McCann has probably already written better books. In this one, which reads throughout like thinly disguised autobiography, he retraces places of his parents' marriage. The story is told mostly in flashback as he visits his dying father in the ramshackle Irish hometown and broken down house where he grew up. Mom (Mam) has long since and wisely fled for parts unknown and based on the description of the old man here it's hard to tell what she saw in him. Intoxicated by his craft and his mastery of words, McCann rarely lets the story tell itself. Once he learns to rein in his tendency to pose on the page, I suspect he'll be fine. Check out his later work to find out, but you can miss Songdogs.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cannot go wrong,
By
This review is from: Songdogs: A Novel (Paperback)
One of the only novels I've actually reread immediately because I didn't want it to end. Would make an amazing film.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Journey,
By Peter (Colorado) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Songdogs: A Novel (Paperback)
A tiny bitten over-written at times and yet ot still manages to be profound and beautiful and even, on occassion, harsh. The last 50 pages are pure classic. Truly unforgettable. Someone should make a film of this novel.
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