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A review by annevoi
Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
5.0
A novella and three short stories: about an old man's death, a soldier in Afghanistan thinking of her lover back home, an Irish woman whose deaf adopted son goes missing, and a nun finding salvation from a decades-old horror. Exquisite prose; beautifully wrought characters and emotions. Very impressed. Yes, I will be reading more McCann.
A passage in the novella that I liked: "Poets, like detectives, know the truth is laborious: it doesn't occur by accident, rather it is chiseled and worked into being, the product of time and distance and graft. The poet must be open to the possibility that she has to go a long way before a word rises, or a sentence holds, or a rhythm opens, and even then nothing is assured, not even the words that have staked their original claim or meaning. Sometimes it happens at the most unexpected moment, and the poet has to enter the mystery, rebuild the poem from there."
A passage in the novella that I liked: "Poets, like detectives, know the truth is laborious: it doesn't occur by accident, rather it is chiseled and worked into being, the product of time and distance and graft. The poet must be open to the possibility that she has to go a long way before a word rises, or a sentence holds, or a rhythm opens, and even then nothing is assured, not even the words that have staked their original claim or meaning. Sometimes it happens at the most unexpected moment, and the poet has to enter the mystery, rebuild the poem from there."