A Novella and Three Stories - Thirteen Ways of Looking

Thirteen Ways of Looking, by Colum McCann, Penguin Random House, October 2015, hardback, 256 pages

This, the first of Mr. McCann's work I have read, has prompted me to add his earlier writing to my ever-growing TBR pile.

This collection -- a novella and three short stories -- is suffused with a sense of looming doom, lurking just beneath the surface, around the next corner, right outside the door, in a dangerous world where keeping personal track has become increasingly difficult even as one's every move might be recorded -- by surveillance camera, computer-cookies, spy-drones -- and one's every impulse reported -- on social media or from the collection of clicks and images and conversations one has committed on modern technology.

But here, listen what the Penguin Random House website has to say:

About Thirteen Ways of Looking

In such acclaimed novels as Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, National Book Award–winning author Colum McCann has transfixed readers with his precision, tenderness, and authority. Now, in his first collection of short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of chance, and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments.“As it was, it was like being set down in the best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.”

In the exuberant title novella, a retired judge reflects on his life’s work, unaware as he goes about his daily routines that this particular morning will be his last. In “Sh’khol,” a mother spending Christmas alone with her son confronts the unthinkable when he disappears while swimming off the coast near their home in Ireland. In “Treaty,” an elderly nun catches a snippet of a news report in which it is revealed that the man who once kidnapped and brutalized her is alive, masquerading as an agent of peace. And in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” a writer constructs a story about a Marine in Afghanistan calling home on New Year’s Eve.

Deeply personal, subtly subversive, at times harrowing, and indeed funny, yet also full of comfort, Thirteen Ways of Looking is a striking achievement. With unsurpassed empathy for his characters and their inner lives, Colum McCann forges from their stories a profound tribute to our search for meaning and grace. The collection is a rumination on the power of storytelling in a world where language and memory can sometimes falter, but in the end do not fail us, and a contemplation of the healing power of literature.

This book is a marvelous example of the artistry and emotional heft unique to literature. The rhythms of Mr. McCann's prose limn the layered and leveled experience of being alive, a sentient, contemplative, empathetic and empathic soul, reaching to find meaning in a world gone slightly mad. I say "unique to literature" because the slow build, the circling, the digression of the writing, the recurrence of themes throughout the four offerings within, the look of the words on the page, the seeing of the letters of certain of the language, these offer sensations and engender emotional responses unlike those brought about by music or visual arts or films or theatre -- this is the kind of writing that makes Literary Fiction a Fine Art.

But Thirteen Ways of Looking is not some pretentious, impenetrable, too-long tome of twaddle celebrated by those who would have fiction be an invitation-only mess of difficult, tortured phrases, code and trickery clubbily shared by MFA-collecting/selling ogres of elitism, those few thousand insiders whose balderdash and poppycock can only be parsed among them, but who manage to Emperors-New-Clothes the gullible reading-public into going along with their dicta.

No, this is a book you can read. This is a book you can feel. This is a beautifully written book which does not require an "Insider's Guide To" anything -- MFA-speak, trendy-tropes, or the like -- in order to understand.

The opening title novella and the final story, Treaty, feature aging protagonists of weakening memory and physical capacity whose stories are propelled by details captured on camera, whose lives are altered by villains hiding hideous secrets of sins they've committed, whose late lives are exercises in the self-torments of wondering the whys of the horrifying behaviors of those devils and miscreants of memory: Does evil exist full-blown, created by itself, or did we invite it in? What is our responsibility for these moments of terror?

As someone who has reached an age where often I lose track of names and details, where rights and wrongs -- my own, and others -- have edges that have become so elided I no longer quite believe anything is ever either/or, Mr. McCann's meditation on relationships, loss, and the ways in which our own thoughts shape and re-shape reality had intense resonance for me.

Other than to say these stories often flow like poetry, each word feeling completely required, every sentence singing fully composed, many a phrase offering a surprise or an "ahh" or a shock of recognition, I leave the deep exegesis of Mr. McCann's mastery of language, syntax, and his technical acumen to the Mr. Woods of the world (and The New Yorker) and stick to my specialty, my business as a Constant Reader, or Gentle Reader, who cherishes books and words and the discovery of a brilliant writer new to me with a backlist and oeuvre I am now free to explore.

If you've not read Mr. McCann's work, I suggest you do; especially if you are of a certain age, have parents of a certain age, have children, or have ever wondered to yourself, "Did I make this world or is it making me? Did this happen as I remember it or is my memory making it happen in retrospect in that way?"

The answers are never simple, never -- at least in my case -- achieved; but how lovely a book like this, Thirteen Ways of Looking, in which the questions are asked with such elegance and beauty.

See entire review here at my blog: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/reading-colum-mccanns-thirteen-ways-of-looking/

'Thirteen Ways of Looking' by Colum McCann is a brilliant collection comprised of a novella and three short stories. I found myself mesmerized by the language and rhythm of the writing.

The title novella is a day in the life of an aging judge who meets his son for dinner and the tragic events that unfold around that. The father relates events of the past and present in a stream-of-consciousness way that reflects how I know I think, and may be familiar to other readers. Each of the 13 chapters includes a stanza from Wallace Steven's poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

The three short stories are about a writer on a deadline, a mother who buys her son a gift he has been wanting, and a nun sees her rapist and tormentor on television at a peace conference and has to confront her feelings all over again.

In an afterword by the author, it is told that the stories were written before a senseless attack on the author after he tried to help a woman on the street. The attack left him unconscious and hospitalized. we are fortunate to still have this voice among us. It's a beautiful collection of stories.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

More short stories. The last two books I finished were short story collections and I wasn’t sure I wanted to move on to another. “Shoot,” I said, “it’s Colum McCann. You know you’re going to love it.” And I did.

In “Thirteen Ways of Looking”, the title novella, an elderly, retired judge reflects back on his life during the course of what, unbeknownst to him, will be his last day on this earth. He’s insightful, he’s funny in that funny, old-man kinda way, and he is one rich character! I felt like he was going to totter right off the page with his walking stick and right into my den. I found myself wishing he actually had but that would have really freaked my dogs out! Security cameras record each moment of that final day: Hidden cameras in his home (installed by a son intent on catching the live-in help in something illicit) capture his morning rituals, cameras located in the common areas of his apartment building and on the street paint a picture of his daily, noon-time foray, and the video system at Chialli’s (his usual lunch spot) pieces together his final minutes and seconds. As Judge Mendelssohn takes stock, it feels as if we also have a video link directly into his brain: We’re party to every thought, every memory, every tangent his mind takes, right up until the moment of his demise.

While Judge Mendelssohn is one immensely likeable old dude, his son Elliot is another matter altogether. In the most heartbreaking vignette of the story, Elliot, self-absorbed, self-important jerk that he is, joins Pops for lunch but then spends nearly every minute on his cell phone.

A writer is commissioned to write a New Year’s Eve-themed short story in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” and McCann takes us both into the story the author writes and into the author’s mind as he writes it. It's absorbing insight into the way a writer thinks, how he inhabits his characters, asks the questions they would ask.

“Sh’khol” is every parent’s nightmare. What happens when you turn your back for that one second (or hour . . . or hours in this instance), when you allow yourself to lapse into inattention for just a little too long? And when the child has special needs, the agony is compounded.

In “Treaty”, a septuagenarian nun realizes that the man who once held her brutally captive has become a proponent of peace.

McCann is a heck of a writer, a true literary heavyweight. He’s one you read for the sheer joy of the way he works the language. It seems effortless from our perspective, but if fiction writing is at all autobiographical, then I think McCann is telling us in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” that writing is anything but easy. Still he makes it look that way. He has a true gift for expressing the inner workings in each of his characters minds: the searching, the questioning, the whys and wherefores, the answers we’re constantly looking for and only sometimes finding, the sheer humanness of just being human. He makes me jealous that I don’t have that gift!

As an example of the utter realness of McCann’s writing, I keep going back to a passage from “Thirteen Ways of Looking”, as Judge Mendelssohn assesses his lunch-time waitress: “Genuine it seems: she’s not just blowing smoke, like half the waitstaff seem to do every day, their mundanities, nice to see you, have a good day, are you still working on that, sir? I’m eating, young lady, not working.” McCann absolutely nails the laissez-faire attitude of many young people today in this one musing of Mendelssohn’s, and Mendelssohn’s attitude towards it. I have to say that attitude is a pet peeve of mine too, and I’m not nearly so old as Mendelssohn. It’s like when you tell your server, “Thank you”, and they shoot back, “No problem.” Of course it’s “no problem”. It’s YOUR JOB! Whatever happened to “You’re welcome”? Where is Emily Post when we need her? But I digress.

McCann will probably rack up tons of awards and accolades for this collection and deservedly so. These are stories you keep thinking about and musing on long after you’re finished. For the title novella alone, I give this collection 5 stars. This one made me want to sing, y’all!

A review copy of this book was provided to me by Random House Publishing Group – Random House via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed are my own.

A retired judge muses about his life one morning, not knowing that day will be his last. A single mother agonizes over her only child when he goes missing. A writer struggles with a story about a Marine in Afghanistan. A nun considers the opportunity to confront the kidnapper who raped her. National Book Award winning author Colum McCann offers readers four novellas that dig deep in his brand new book Thirteen Ways of Looking.

In the title story, retired Judge J. Mendelssohn wakes up on a day that threatens a snowstorm. He doesn’t care,. He’s going to gather what dignity he has left, what dignity a man who has to depend on a live-in nurse to take him to the bathroom can gather, and go to lunch to his favorite restaurant with his son. Never mind that his son is glued to his phone during the meal. Never mind the weather. Judge Mendelssohn is going to lunch. When someone attacks Mendelssohn and kills him, the police must piece together the former judge’s last steps and movements on that morning to figure out who might have targeted him and why.

The second story, “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?”, follows an unnamed writer’s struggles with a story. He tries to follow one plot and then another, settling finally on a story about a Marine in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve. As the year progresses and his deadline approaches, the characters in his story move toward the inevitable stroke of midnight on December 31. Questions come to the writer, and in the end he spends just as much time pondering his character’s situation as the character herself.

“Sh’khol”, the third story, introduces readers to Rebecca and her son, Tomas. When Rebecca adopted Tomas she was married and happy; now, when he’s reached the age of 13, she’s divorced and determined to enjoy their first Christmas as mother and son in a cottage on the ocean. When she presents him with a wetsuit for Christmas, Tomas is thrilled. But when he goes missing one morning, Rebecca fears the worst. With his communication disabilities heavy on her mind, Rebecca sinks into a depth of doubt about herself as a mother.

The final story, “Treaty”, details the history of Beverly, a nun, who sees her rapist on television. The attack happened decades ago, and Beverly has spent her entire life since then trying to come back to a normal state of living. She finally thinks she’s reached it when her attacker appears as part of a coalition of peace. From the time she sees him, Beverly returns in her mind to her abduction. She finally decides that enough is enough. She needs to create an opportunity to confront her rapist so she can put the entire terrible incident behind her once and for all.

Fans of literary fiction will revel in author Colum McCann’s character development and the sheer enjoyment he clearly reaps from handling language well. McCann doesn’t let touchy issues hold him back, whether it’s the details from a rape scene or the considerations of a man in what it means to get old. He pushes forward, letting his stories and the language share equal time in the forefront.

The first and last stories in this collection bookend the set with strength, while the second and third stories aren’t quite up to the same mark. Regardless, McCann pushes his readers’ emotions and asks them to work a little harder than what much mainstream fiction requires of readers. I recommend readers Borrow Thirteen Ways of Looking.

No, not the composer. This is Judge Peter J. Mendelssohn, a Lithuanian Jew, escaped by way of Paris and Dublin, married to an Irishwoman, Eileen, the love of his life, his legal career in New York capped by election to the Brooklyn Supreme Court, now at age 82 and in retirement, killed outside a restaurant on a snowy day in Manhattan. McCann divides his novella into thirteen chapters, each prefaced by one of the haiku-compact stanzas of Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Appropriately, they jump to and fro in viewpoint. The odd-numbered chapters are objective in nature, meticulously describing the judge's apartment, or sitting with the detectives as they piece together the closed-circuit footage of the scene. The even-numbered ones, though still in the third person, are from the judge's point of view, roughly in order during the last day of his life, but so illuminated by reminiscence and reverie that they become a tribute to a whole life, a great love, and two now-grown children raised with varying degrees of success.

"The juice. Sally says he should call it a smoothie, but he doesn't like the word, simple as that, nothing smooth about it. He was on a shuffle in the park the other day -- no other word, every day a shuffle now -- and he saw a young woman at the park benches near the reservoir with the word Juicy written in pink across her rear end, and he had to admit, even at his age, that it wasn't far from the truth. With all apologies to Eileen, of course, and Sally too, and Rachel, and Riva, and Denise, and MaryBeth, and Ava, no doubt, and Oprah, and Brigitte, and even Simone de Beauvoir, why not, and all the other women of the world, sorry all, but it was indeed rather juicy, the way it bounced, with the little boundary of dark skin above, and the territory of shake below, and there was a time, long ago, when he could've squeezed a thing or two out of that, oh don't talk to me of smoothies."

Oh, these Irish writers! With a cocktail of James Joyce and the Blarney Stone, they can fly to the moon, and almost do. By coincidence, I was just reviewing (negatively) a book by John Banville, who might almost have written this passage. Almost, but not quite. For Banville would not have been content with such simple vocabulary; he would not have had this exuberance, this control of pace; the litany of names he would have chosen for sound alone, not tying them so precisely to the judge's generation and slightly dated grasp of the contemporary scene. McCann has the gift of the gab all right, but he uses it to targeted effect. This thirteen-part, intensely poetic novella, somewhere between a memoir, a detective story, and a lament, is immensely powerful in its ability to mean far more than it says.

The book is completed by three separate stories of different lengths. "What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?", the shortest, is a veritable master-class. An Irish writer gets a commission for a New Year's Eve story. Struggling to shake off the shadow of Joyce's "The Dead," he turns to its virtual opposite, a female Marine alone on a ridge in Afghanistan. Fascinated, we watch the story emerge piece by piece, only then to fall apart, as life raises more questions than fiction can possibly answer. As McCann says in his afterword, "For all its imagined moments, literature works in unimaginable ways."

The remaining two stories are both substantial. "Sh'khol" is a Hebrew word whose sense will emerge as the crux of the story, first with one meaning and then, in a heartrending twist, with another. Beginning with a divorced Irishwoman living on the coast of Galway, who buys a wet suit as a Christmas present for her adopted deaf-mute son, it starts with a set of quite particular specifics, but ends with emotions felt by parents everywhere. "Treaty," the final story, begins when an aging nun in a retreat on Long Island recognizes a figure from her past on the television news. Now, he is a smooth-spoken Colombian delegate to a London peace conference; thirty-five years before, he was the jungle terrorist who imprisoned, tortured, and raped her. It is a situation that has been explored before in fiction and on the stage, but seldom with this healing grace.

In his author's note, McCann says that all four stories were written around an incident he suffered in 2014 when, coming to the aid of a street-crime victim, he was himself knocked unconscious and hospitalized. While only the novella features a similar assault, all four deal with danger. But what makes the collection extraordinary is that while McCann is frank in his handling of violence, what he really focuses on is the humanity and yes, the love, that lights the lives of the ordinary people caught up in it.

This is an interesting set of stories. Some have multiple perspectives and the writing is wonderful. Descriptive and interesting and just the right amount.

In the first story, you realize you are reading about the video feed inside an apartment and then it flips to the musings of an elderly former judge, who is the subject of the cameras. An intelligent man bereft of his wife with an aide helping him in his daily life. He is sharp but prone to musing about the past. He is also not thrilled about the infirmities of old age. His thoughts flit from one idea to the next and it so mimics the normal mind chatter we have that it seems natural.

Following this story, is a story about a story. A writer’s construction of a story for the New Year. His characters take on a life of their own and even he wonders where this is going to go.

The third story, also a bit unconventional is about a woman who has adopted a special needs son and the events around a ill-chosen Christmas gift. You are treated to her thoughts and her attempts to communicate with her son.

Finally and not least is a story about a nun, who sees her former captor on TV being touted as a “peacemaker”. This has left her in a state of agitation, thinking she has resolved her issues around that time. She has to find out if it is really him.

What I particularly liked about the book, is that the mind’s of the characters were so mapped out. The description of the scene, minimal but complete in capturing the atmosphere of the moment. I had a hard time putting it down.

This is the first collection of short stories to appear in twelve years for McCann, who won the National Book Award in 2008 for his novel, Let the Great World Spin. A novella, “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” starts it off: in alternating chapters, we follow the stream of consciousness thoughts of a retired New York Circuit judge on his last day of life and the actions of the police detectives seeking to discover who killed him and why. The conjoining of two such different narratives, both in content and style, works: the detective segments of the story aren’t as compelling as the judge’s internal narrative but the conjoining of the two adds poignance to the judge’s fate. Three short stories follow. “Sh’Khoi” is about an Irish woman with an adopted son who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome, is deaf and given to fits of rage and fear. He’s nearly a man now and she gives him a wet suit as a present one morning. The next day the suit is gone from the hook in his room and he’s missing. “Sh’Khoi” was awarded a Pushcart Prize and has been selected to appear in the next collection of The Best American Short Stories. In “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” McCann has found a novel way to write about the experience of a young woman soldier holding down New Year’s Eve guard duty in an Afghani outpost: her story is being teased out in drabs and dribbets by an author who is under a deadline to produce the story for the New Year’s edition of a magazine. It’s not a real story. It’s a made up one, but it feels more and more real the longer he works it over. “Treaty” is wrenching. A nun recognizes a face on television. It’s the man who kidnapped, raped and abused her for months in a Central American jungle years before. Now he’s one of the negotiators for a trade agreement with that country, no longer a leftist rebel but a shill for the capitalist miners. She maneuvers a meeting with him, with disastrous results. The story is sad and wrenching. And in so being, it points out a commonality in these four tales: their lack of resolution. They end but they don’t resolve. In that respect, they’re much like life, but more elegantly expressed.

The title of this new Colum McCann collection – one novella followed by three short stories – is unabashedly borrowed from Wallace Stevens’ haiku-like poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”…an exercise in varying perspectives that issue from the poet’s imagination.

It’s almost like a Rubik’s Cube: turn the author’s imagination this way and one thing will appear; turn it another way and something else comes to the surface. Yet every single movement centers around how we search for meaning, narrative, and grace in a world that may seem random.

In the novella, an octogenarian judge named Mendelssohn – same name as the gifted classical composer – arranges to meet his churlish son Elliot on what will be the last day of his life. Thirteen chapters – some narrating his progression through that fortuitous day, others focused on detectives who are, in effect, autopsying that day by cutting it into tiny slivers, introduces a host of minor characters with their own perspectives as this cacophony of melodies finally crescendos to the final true note. It’s a deceptively hard feat to pull off, and Mr. McCann does so beautifully.

In the shortest piece, “What Time is it Now, Where You Are?” the perspective of a writer (perhaps the author himself) is displayed, as we, the readers, become witness to the very art of creation and shifting perspectives.

Sh’khol, the next piece, centers on a mother spending Christmas in Galway with her deaf and often uncommunicative young son, who disappears around the time she is translating a beautifully written story by an Arab Israeli abut a middle-aged couple who lost their two children. Sh’khol – there is no relative word in other languages – defines a parent who has lost a child. Fact and fiction, the perspective expands to include both.

Finally, in Treaty, an elderly nun Beverly – brutally raped in her youth – catches a glimpse of her rapist, now a dignified peacekeeper, on TV. It is established that her memory is fading; what is the perspective? Is “Carlos” the same person who brutalized her in truth? How has he discovered grace? Who this man is depends on perspective.

This is a magnificent book without a false note. Absolutely a five-star read.

Colum McCann's recent collection of a novella and three short stories brilliantly captures ambiguity in the lives of his characters. Each story centers around a single individual, their thoughts and circumstances. The title story is a novella about a retired judge, starting with the morning of his last day on earth. He has a disappointing lunch with his son, and is attacked and killed on the street as he makes his way home. The police investigation into his death models the attempt to wrest a coherent conclusion from the muddiness of real life. The second story takes a fictional author through the process of creating a story and it, too, ends in ambiguity. Ambiguity is a key element to the last two stories as well. We never really know what has happened to the deaf child who disappears and then returns to his single mother. We don't know the result of the confrontation between an older retired nun with the man who kidnapped and abused her years ago and who has now appeared as a respectable emissary of reconciliation.

McCann is a brilliant writer. I loved his earlier work and 'Thirteen Ways of Looking Fully' lives up to his promise. He brings his characters to life and captures a palpable sense of place. The plots are tight and there are twists and turns ample to keep our attention. Read 'Thirteen Ways of Looking' and everything else he has written. He reveals and explores the power and potential of literature to enhance the reader's capacity to experience the world in all of its richness.

So difficult to quantify the admiration I have for this author, and yet, I find I've only read a few of his books. That will change. This collection, consisting of a novella of impenetrable depth and beauty and four insightful stories, is one of the best I've read this year. The novella, Thirteen Ways of Looking, charts, the progress of the last day of an admirable man. Told from many angles, as the title indicates, it never wallows in sentimentality. This is one instance when I can honestly say I have no favorite. Each story stands alone in its perfection. Sorry if I've gushed too much, but when you read as much as I do, and come upon a book so special, it's hard not to overstate its fine qualities.

If Colum McCann were to write grocery ads, he could probably make them beautiful, disturbing, and memorable. Fortunately for us, he puts his talents to greater works than grocery ads.

Although I tend to shy away from short story collections, I make exceptions for authors I love. These stories are not connected through the characters; they are stand-alone. The title story is quite long, more of a novella, and with ore substance than many novels. There are blackbirds at the beginning of each section, beautiful lines I didn't always understand. The first is:

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

There was unexpected violence and unanswered questions. Each of the four short stories is remarkable in its own way, but all are unusual, unsettling, and beautifully written. And requiring the reader's imagination.

It took me longer to read this book than it normally does for one of its length. That's because I couldn't read too much at one sitting. I wanted to ponder and savor, and not rush through to the next story. What a lovely collection.

I was given an advance reader's ebook for review.

I just finished Colum McCann’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking” and it is simply the antithesis of the last two books I reviewed (Purity and City on Fire). And that’s a good thing–in case you were wondering. None of the clutter or pretension. Simply beautiful writing, moving story telling and believable, recognizable and sympathetic characters.

Thirteen Ways of Looking is a novella and three short stories. Each is beautifully written, touching, thoughtful and subtle.

The title work and the longest of the four delves into the life, mind, heart and death of an aging retired lawyer and judge, Peter Mendelssohn. The story consists of thirteen chapters, which may be one way of interpreting the title, although the looking goes much deeper than that. Each chapter begins with a stanza of Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”. When we first meet Mr. Mendelssohn, he is lying in bed in his expansive Manhattan apartment, thinking about his previously deceased wife, his live-in health care helper (who calls him Mr. J), his son and daughter, his career and his blackberry. He is trying to figure out how to get out of bed on his own and attend to his daily functions so as to maintain some semblance of self sufficiency in old age.

As Mendelssohn looks back on his life, he muses over the impact place and circumstances of birth can have on a life. “Curious thing, the blood we inherit. Slapping around inside, making us who we are: the landscape itself gets a say in the outcome of the mind.” And he observes just how fleeting success and career truly are in the great expanse of time. “You work your whole life to become a pillar of the community and then it all disappears in front of your eyes.”

But the story is not just about Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn is the vehicle around which we learn about the hearts of others living in very different circumstances, likely as a result of the blood each has inherited. The story is filled with wisdom and thoughtfulness mostly from the perspective of a life well lived, with a reminder that regardless of who you are, no life is without its loss and challenges and that ultimately, although circumstances vary, each life ends the same way.

“What Time is it Now, Where You Are”, is a very short story about writing a short story. The male writer is composing a short story for the New Year’s Eve edition of a newspaper magazine. He is focused on the fictional life of a woman marine stationed in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve. The author’s anticipation of the soldier’s telephone call home tells the reader a great deal about the soldier’s life. The 11 page story evidences McCann’s amazing skill at evoking feeling with minimal language and without telling the reader how to feel, and reminding us how every story can change with every possibility.

“Sh’Khol”, Hebrew for losing a child, is the story of a divorced woman living in Galway and raising an adopted, deaf, disabled child born with fetal alcohol syndrome in Vladivostok. After she gives her son a wet suit for Christmas he disappears and the circumstances of his disappearance will never be clear. The story is about divorce, parenting challenges, guilt, disability, fear and compassion.

Finally, “Treaty” is an incredible story about a nun, Beverly, who, while in New York, sees a television news story that appears to include a man who kidnapped and abused her 27 years earlier in South America. When we first meet her, Beverly is living with a group of nuns on Long Island, where she has been sent for rest. She is becoming forgetful and chain smoking. She sees the television story and begins remembering the past, her role with the Church and her periodic questioning of faith. Ultimately, “Treaty” is a story of great strength amidst inflexibility and cruelty.

McCann concludes this collection with a very short Author’s Note, where he says, among other things, “Sometimes it seems to me that we are writing our lives in advance, but at other times we can only ever look back. …For all its imagined moments, literature works in unimaginable ways.”

For me, McCann’s comments sum up literature at its best. And the best is what you will find in this collection. Take it out from the library, read it and cherish it!
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Before _Thirteen Ways of Looking_ came my way, the only works by Dublin-born, New York-resident author Colum McCann I had read was a pair of stories and a pair of squibs published in the New Yorker. The title novella occupies about three-fifths of the volume, with lines from Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” heading each segment — though if there is a connection between the content of the poem and the content of the segments, it eluded me. The novella has shifting viewpoints on the cruelly interrupted last day of a retired and increasingly frail, widower New York Jewish Judge Mendelssohn, following lunch with his insensitive attorney son.

The reader gets inside the head of the judge and of the investigation of his murder on the steps of an upscale Upper East Side Italian restaurant: not any particular detective’s but the collective investigation. The reader knows whodunit, but McCann withholds the outcome of two legal cases.

There is important information missing in “Sh’khol,” too. Its protagonist is a Jewish translator from Hebrew to English who has become the single mom for a deaf boy adopted from Russia, who may have been a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome and moved to the west coast of Ireland. What the reader would most like to know and doesn’t learn is also what she realizes she is never going to find out.

I’d say there is resolution in “Treaty,” in which a 76-year-old Irish-born nun who was raped and tortured by rebels in Colombia 37 years earlier recognizes her torturer who is negotiating something for Colombian coal miners in London. Sister Beverly has been working at a shelter for women in Houston and has been sent to rest and recuperate on Long Island, which is where she sees the tormentor she knew as “Carlos,” and goes to London (where her brother lives) to confront the now slick Colombian.

And the shortest of the fictions, “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” is a metaficiton in which a New Year’s story is being concocted. The title question is going to be asked to a son in South Carolina by his mother, who has taken sentry duty while others party in Afghanistan. It does not need an ending… whereas, I was frustrated at the open-ending of “Thirteen Ways.”

I felt that “Treaty” was a bit padded with extraneous details about various locales, but “Sh’khol” is pretty perfect. And I’ll happily stipulate that the title novella is a rich concotion and that McCann writes some beautiful images and phrases.

All four fictions were, according to a closing author’s note, written around his own encounter with being struck down in Connecticut. The note refers interested readers to the Victim Impact Statement posted on his website, except that it is not there! Another reader expectation tweaked?

shimmering brilliance. and beauty. to take the obscure poem by wallace stevens, THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING, and place each strophe from that poem as epigraphs to the thirteen sections of a novella, the same title as the poem, in such a way that at the conclusion of the story, poem and story have complemented and commented on each other to the enrichment and appreciation of the reader is an awesome accomplishment.

in the opening section of the novella is a room with a table on which are three books, two by nobel literature prize winners, gabriel garcia marquez and toni morrison, and the third, by the dark horse who says he is no longer running in the literary race, philip roth. mccann would have hit the trifeca had he selected, in ascending order of american countries, instead of roth, saul bellow. like the late bellow, mccann chose the form of the novella to tell the story of a late in life big city jew. mccann's take on the jewish novel, arguably could be called homage, and my remarks here incidental, however, it is the first look in the life of the protagonist, mendelssohn.

to name a protagonist mendelssohn and then mention in passing the composer's 4th symphony--at the end of the story i listened to the symphony, and the words of the story, still fresh in my consciousness as the falling snow pivotal to the story related in fragments and phrases, harmonious with the music and the poem, was for me a transcendent experience. the brilliance of mccann's writing kept me turning page after page of a murder mystery without clues and the chronicle of the life of mendelssohn, a retired judge.

three stories follow the novella, the first is a venture in experimental fiction, where the reader gets to peer over the shoulder of a writer as over a period of months, he conceives and drafts a story commissioned to appear in a newspaper magazine.

the two remaining stories: a nun must decide to confront a man from a brutal period during her past, and ask herself if as a christian she cannot forget how then can she forgive? in the last story a woman raising a deaf boy she adopted learns a lesson in what it means to be a parent.

each story is told in a different style. what holds them all together is mccann's attention to detail and his sense of inner music subsumed within his often magical prose.

Winner of the Pushcart Prize 2015, Best American Short Stories 2015 and the store Book of the Month October 2015, Thirteen Ways of Looking is one of those books that makes you gasp for breath afterwards. Taking the form of a novella and three short stories, which were written before and after McCann was attacked while helping a woman who had been assaulted, he describes them as accidental autobiography, in the guise of fiction.

The eponymous novella traces the thoughts of an elderly judge, on the last day of his life. It is a murder mystery, but it reads like poetry. As his memory jumps from past to present, and his attention skips from one subject to another, we see his past, present and future jumbled together in a kind of stream-of-consciousness narrative. Propelled by the desire to find out whodunnit, the reader is lured into the spectacular prose that characterizes McCann’s style. The second story, “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” is about a writer who is trying to write a short story; it is a frame story of the creative process, but also of loneliness and distance, as he creates the story of a Marine who stands watch in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve, away from her family. In “Sh’khol” we are pulled into the panicked and disturbing thoughts of a woman whose adopted son has gone missing, possibly drowned, the day after she gave him a wetsuit. Finally, in “Treaty”, a nun who is the survivor of a brutal assault comes face to face with her attacker.

The sombre tone of the novella drew me in, and this story profoundly upset me. The judge’s relationship with his housekeeper, his inability to voice the many thoughts running through his head, limited by his age to vague mumblings that, out of the context of his runaway mind, make little sense to others. His ability to connect with people; his perceptiveness of others motivations and characters, made him a sympathetic character, which made his death all the more frustrating.

The characters strive to be the best they can, while honestly being aware of their own weaknesses. The complexity of the characters in this book are what makes it excellent, but there is more to it than that.

What I liked most about this book was McCann’s style.McCann’s descriptions ooze novelty; his similes and metaphors, his rhythm and the repeated motifs – these are the bits that made this book stand high above the others.

It’s a stunning collection of stories that are connected more by theme than plot. It stands solidly as a single piece of work, and the characters are unforgettable. This is a beautiful book. It’s a heartbreaking book. It’s an emotionally explosive book, and it’s a book that will force its way into your heart. It is a must-read, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read it one more time.

Read my full review on Literogo.com

Colum McCann, the award winning Irish writer is back with this beautiful collection. The first story “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” is a novella about an elderly retired judge contemplating his life while maneuvering his normal lonely day through a Manhattan snow storm, not knowing it is his last. McCann not only does a beautiful job of presenting his life, but also gives the reader a chance to solve the mystery as to who caused the death blow to our octogenarian narrator.

Following the novella are three shorter stories, all magnificent in their brevity. In “What Time is It Now, Where Are You?” readers are taken on a ride as a writer constructs the story of a Marine calling home on New Year’s Eve, privy to every decision and detail that make the story touchingly realistic.

“Sh’khol” is the story of a Irish mother who adopted a Russian child with special needs. The two live an isolated life off the Irish coast. He disappears with is new Christmas wet suit, and she is forced to face all the chilling possibilities, which includes the daunting realization that raising a teen with severe special needs will become increasingly difficult all alone.

Finally, “Treaty” is the story of an elderly nun who catches a glimpse of the man who kidnapped and tortured her decades before in the South American country where she was doing good works. He is now a diplomat in London for a series of peace talks, forcing the nun to confront her past in order to live.

I’m not usually a fan of novellas or short stories, because they need so much nuance to make them work, and often writers don’t achieve the necessary level. But McCann does. These are all beautiful and well-written. Each left me with an exuberant soul and a deeper appreciation for excellent writing.

I give this collection 5 stars. I loved each of these stories, and suggest this book for you To Be Read pile!!!

This is a mesmerizing collection of a novella and three short stories. Irish author Colum McCann's radiant prose seems the consummate soother of the ever-shuffling soul while his stories stir one's deepest sentiments: a child disappears overnight from his mother's bed at a seaside resort; a writer goes through the stop-and-go process of writing a short story on distant lovers; a nun faces her fears and resentments after seeing her South American captor/rapist on a televised "peace" press conference 30 years later; and, in the eponymous novella, an elderly, retired and widowed judge's stream of consciousness on the day of his murder brilliantly mixed with a third person narrative of the NYPD detectives' investigation.

A quite humorous sample from the novella -- the Judge's inner dialog describing his disappointment with his son Elliott:

“He took a trip ... up to ... Elliott's house, his mansion rather. Awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door and next door to that. A row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity. His very own son. His big, bald son. Who could believe it. The bigness, the baldness, the stupidity. In a house designed to bore the daylight out of visitors, no character at all, all blonde wood and fluorescent lighting and clean white machinery.

Not to mention his brand new wife, number three, a clean white machine herself. Up from the cookie cutter and into Elliott's life, she might as well have jumped out of the microwave, her skin orange, her teeth pearly white. A trophy wife. But why the word 'trophy'? Something to shoot on a safari.”

The words flow over the soul as a boreal breeze ripples a field of shamrocks. In writing this review I searched for an appropos term for a prose narrative that is as poetic and hypnotic as it is moving. One I found should do the trick: a "euphony" (pleasing to the ear, especially through a harmonious combination of words), with the descriptors "heartrending" and "profound."

"Thirteen Ways of Looking" features three short stories and an excellent novella. The stories are wonderfully written, entertaining, thought-provoking, and occasionally moving.

The title novella is told with an interesting perspective as a retired octogenarian judge reflects on his life with intermittent interjections from police investigating his murder. Colum McCann makes this work and in no way does it slow the momentum of the narrator's reminiscences--primarily focused on his late wife--or the mystery of his death. It's a well-told tale with an interesting narrator and a well-plotted, but quickly told, mystery.

The second story, "What Time is it Now, Where Are You", is the shortest in this collection at 10 pages (or so) and it's also told in an interesting fashion as a writer details how he plans to write a New Years Eve story for a magazine. And in the process, he tells the story of a lonely Marine deployed to Afghanistan who's getting ready to call her spouse and stepson.

The penultimate tale, "Sh'khol", is an emotional story about a distraught mother whose adopted thirteen-year old son goes missing off the west coast of Ireland. It's a rather disturbing novel, but the pathos and portrait of the panicked mother make this a worthy read.

"Treaty", the last story in this collection is even more emotional and disturbing as a nun visiting a convent sees the man who raped, confined, and tortured her many years earlier when she was a missionary in South America. As with all the stories in this collection, this story features an interesting and well drawn protagonist and well-paced, complete story.

This is a terrific collection and features an interesting note from McCann stating that he wrote these stories in 2014 on either side of a violent assault he suffered in Connecticut. Well worth reading--the stories and the note.

Terrific collection of short stories that are laid out in glowing but economical language. Nearly half of the book is devoted to the story of a murder that eventually shows how order and habit are no match for the vagaries of outside fate and irony. It's a brilliant small drama that I had to read twice to soak up the wonderful play of language and playful darkness.

The rest of the stories are about extraordinary people who pay in some way or another for their efforts, but eventually find some kind of redemption or peace.

This is a book that you read for the acute enjoyment of the crafting of language and story .

The above quote refers to Mendelssohn’s humiliation as he rips off his night-time incontinence pad. He’s 82, a retired judge, now ailing and in the 24-hour care of the sympathetic Sally James who may, or may not, be from Tobago. (He’s a little vague on that.) As the snow starts to fall on the wintry streets of Manhattan, Mendelssohn ventures out gingerly from his apartment block to meet his odious son for lunch. Big mistake.

‘Thirteen Ways of Looking’, the opening novella in this collection, is eye-wateringly good. The writing, the characters, the plot, the narrative shaping – all are first-class. In just 141 well-judged pages, this story is why I read: to be transported to another’s world and believe in it entirely.

Three short stories complete the volume, the threading theme of exterior threat or physical violation emerging, the author tells us in an end-note, after a violent assault he himself endured on a city street in 2014. Short stories rarely do it for me though I admired a line from the story ‘Sh’khol’ that the neatly-attired ex-husband “looked as if he had dressed himself in the third person”. And I did find the final tale, ‘Treaty’, moving and compelling. But the title novella is well worth the price of admission on its own and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Colum McCann's latest effort is a collection of 3 short stories, "What time is now, where you are?", "Sk'hol", "Treaty" and the 142 pg. novella " Thirteen Ways of Looking." "Thirteen ways" follows the last few hours of one elderly retired judges' life as he meets his son for a luncheon appointment just a short walk from his Manhattan apartment. The incident that unfolds there is told from various viewpoints; Mendelssohn, the judge, Sally, his caregiver, Tony, his doorman, Elliot, the son and several members of his favorite old school restaurant-and the detectives who investigate the incident. The story weaves back and forth with stream of consciousness reminisces by Mendelssohn of his wife's loss and his declining physical powers that gives many layers of grief and disruption to what follows.

In "Sk'hol", a single mother struggles to earn a living on the isolated Irish coast by translating Hebrew works (hence the tittle) into English and take care of her adopted emotionally disabled and deaf son. When he goes missing after receiving the Christmas gift of a wetsuit after a night of just a little too much wine for mom, she learns all the connotations of that Hebrew word meant to convey loss and guilt.

With "What time is it now, where you are ?" we get to watch a writer as he constructs a New Years Eve story about longing and loving when a US female Marine deployed in Afghanistan would reach out to by satellite phone given the opportunity on a dark, cold lonely night. "Treaty" is a Catholic sister's journey to confront and forgive her South American torturer when he crops up decades later on a tv news program suddenly representing peace efforts for his country.

All these tales are colored by the authors own recent unprovoked attack in June, 2014 when he was knocked unconscious and hospitalized while assisting a woman who had been victimized. Literature gives one the opportunity to confront the unthinkable before it approaches or deal with it after the fact. In these stories, which are where we get to explore the what ifs? and consider the sweet tragic comedy and pathos that life sometimes hands us. Mr. McCann handles this with his usual deft grace-story telling at its finest.

​"Thirteen Ways of Looking" by Colum McCann, contains a well-crafted novella followed by three excellent short stories. The titular story is structured in 13 chapters which alternate between the stream-of-consciousness narration of the 82-year old protagonist, Peter J. Quinn Mendelssohn, on the last day of his life, and homicide detectives who are viewing the closed-circuit TV films of that day.

Peter's inner voice is wonderfully rendered. Peter is a bit of a curmudgeon, a bit of a letch, a bit pompous, but always sympathetic, as he relates the aches and atrocities of the physical and mental life of an octogenarian. McCann describes Mendelssohn as he navigates his morning and then steps out into a snow storm to meet his beloved, but disappointing, son, Elliot. The detectives, following along his day without his thoughts and feelings, must make assumptions and judgments about his actions and those around him.

Just the right number of questions are left unanswered in, "Thirteen Ways of Looking". How DID Elliot turn out the way he did? And what is fated in the end?

"What Time is it Now, Where You Are?" is perhaps insight into how McCann writes short stories. From the viewpoint of a writer on deadline, we are granted a fascinating gift: a peek into the creative process. Where do story ideas come from? How are characters generated? What comes first - setting or plot? How much of any story is autobiographical? I enjoyed this revelatory story very much.

In "Sh'khol", we meet Rebecca and her deaf and mentally disabled son, Tomas. This taut and suspenseful story unfolds as Rebecca wakes to find Tomas gone, along with his wetsuit, near the sea. In the course of the story we are told the meaning of the word "sh'khol". The story is ultimately a mystery about what happens to Tomas, but also about the mystery that our children become to us as they grow up.

"Treaty" is quite a disturbing story of aging nun, Beverly, who catches a glimpse of a man she calls her "torturer, abuser, rapist" being hailed on the TV news as a hero for peace. But Beverly's mind is fading...are her memories truth? What should she do?

I thoroughly enjoyed these stories and McCann's gorgeous prose.

Colum McCann is on my auto-purchase list just like Aleksander Hemon, Peter Geye, Andrew Ervin, Jonathan Evison, Tim Winton, and other novelists that capture more than plot and more than characterization but also mood. Intangibles are explored so exquisitely that you don't feel like it's one person's embellishment of prose. Rather, it feels almost universal in a way that you hadn't considered before. What I'm saying is it's an old subject sometimes but McCann makes it feel new.

I had heard of his being attacked, and was aghast. I wanted to send a get-well note and was so glad we didn't lose this treasure of a writer. If anything, since that experience, it seems his writing has a bit more edge to it, more revelation of violence rather than hints of it.

My favorite is the first novella, which makes you never want to get old. Age is humiliating. The other three are good too, but this first one is a work of force that sticks with you.

A wonderful book...poetic and haunting..the kind of book that stays with you well past reading it...days..months...years..unforgettable. Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann is going right on my 'Most Faves" list...a beautiful and disturbing read.

If you are interested in reading my review of this book and why I give it 5 stars (more if I could) then check out my blog at: http://dalaimommadrama.blogspot.com/ but if not then YES YES YES, I really liked this book...it's pure short story genius-ness!!(I know, that's not a real word).

A special thanks to the people at goodreads, Random House and Colum McCann for making my opportunity of receiving this free book in exchange for an honest review possible...And honest review I have done happily. I will treasure this book and recommend it to anyone that is looking for a beautiful and genius read.

Wallace Stevens’ 1917 modernist poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” is among the writer’s most haunting works. It’s also one of his most inspiring. Many musicians have written pieces based on the poem’s 13 short stanzas. And eighth blackbird, the brilliant American music ensemble, takes its name from the poem’s eighth stanza, which begins “I know noble accents/And lucid, inescapable rhythms.” The stanzas evoke the cool mystery of winter, and the images of blackbirds amidst snowy mountains and bare trees and icicles that “filled the long window/With barbaric glass” are beautiful and portentous.

Beautiful and portentous are good words to describe THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING, Colum McCann’s new collection of short fiction. The title novella and three stories that constitute this book demonstrate yet again McCann’s ability to inhabit a range of characters and bring disparate worlds to life, as he did in his two most recent works, LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN and TRANSATLANTIC. The theme that connects these stories is the vagaries of chance, a theme that undoubtedly had special resonance for McCann. He was assaulted outside a Connecticut hotel last year when he tried to help a woman involved in a domestic dispute. That’s the sort of incident that would obsess anyone, let alone a writer justly celebrated for his poetic investigations into modern life’s greatest tragedies --- the September 11th attacks, the troubles in northern Ireland --- and the realization that, in any life, grief is never far away.

The title piece bears the closest resemblance to the incident in Connecticut. In 13 chapters, each preceded by a verse from the Stevens poem, McCann tells the story of Peter Mendelssohn, an 82-year-old former New York Supreme Court justice, on the day of his death. Mendelssohn, a widower whose Irish wife, Eileen, would buy him a volume of poetry whenever he won a case during his days as a district attorney, spends most of his days at home attached to an oxygen mask. A Tobago woman named Sally cares for him. One snowy December day, he tells her that he wants to go to an Italian restaurant for lunch with his son, Elliot, a go-getter hedge fund manager who is cheating on his “pile-up of peroxide” wife. At the end of the meal, as Peter waits outside in the cold, his face covered by a scarf, a man he doesn’t recognize pushes him to the ground. Peter hits his head on the pavement and dies.

The story is a McCann version of a thriller, in which the identity and fate of the murderer is withheld until the end. What distinguishes it from most thrillers is not only McCann’s artistry but also the device of telling the tale from multiple perspectives. Throughout the story, detectives attempt to solve the crime by examining footage from a host of cameras installed in Peter’s building and in the restaurant --- a clever technique that mirrors Stevens’ use of multiple perspectives. The story implies that the investigation of a crime bears a resemblance to the analysis of a poem. As one of the novella’s multiple narrators puts it, “Just as a poem turns its reader into accomplice, so, too, the detectives become accomplice to the murder. But unlike our poetry, we like our murders to be fully solved.”

The other three stories are shorter but also hinge upon chance or unpredictable outcomes. In the collection’s weakest entry, “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?”, an author struggles to complete a story that a magazine has commissioned him to write for its New Year’s edition. McCann’s piece takes clever turns but feels more like an exercise than a fully fleshed-out story.

The other two are much stronger: “Sh’khol,” in which the deaf, 13-year-old adopted son of a mother in Galway disappears, and “Treaty,” in which a 76-year-old nun with a failing memory discovers while watching Spanish television that the man who kidnapped and raped her 37 years earlier is now a diplomat trying to broker a peace agreement. Both stories, especially the latter, build to chilling conclusions. McCann’s trademark short, poetic sentences add to the tension and beauty of these stunning works.

In his poem “The Snow Man,” Stevens wrote that each of us “beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING reinforces Stevens’ insight: We are defined not so much by what we know as by what we perceive.

Reviewed by Michael Magras

Colum McCann is truly a master of his craft. This is my first read of McCann’s library of work, but his evocative nature begs further discovery. In the midst of writing Thirteen Ways of Looking, McCann himself was attacked while trying to help a woman who had been assaulted, after which he suffered a broken cheekbone and teeth. He writes in the book’s Author’s Note, “Sometimes it seems to me that we are writing our lives in advance, but at other times we can only look back. In the end, though, every word we write is autobiographical, perhaps most especially when we attempt to avoid the autobiographical”. When you read the book, you’ll understand how poignant this statement is.

Thirteen Ways of Looking includes a novella and three short stories. The title is based upon the poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, of which McCann includes a stanza of the poem at the beginning of each section of the novella. The stories are quite different from one another, but the unifying theme is a strong sense of yearning and loneliness, vividly told.

In the title novella, 82-year old retired judge, Peter Mendelssohn lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is rather frail physically, but quite sharp mentally. Our view into his psyche is of intense loss and loneliness. He lost his wife years earlier and has a distant relationship with his garish son. He shares with us the small daily humiliations of the elderly that he suffers. When he ventures out on a cold, snowy New York day to meet his son for lunch, he’s disregarded as an old man, accosted by the weather, rude drivers, his callous son, then physically on the street outside the restaurant. There are several knots woven into the story in addition to his emotional isolation and attack. While the police investigate the assault, these threads begin to unfold in parallel.

The second story, “What Time Is It Now, Where Are You?” is about Joel, a writer with writer’s block, working on deadline, and creates a tale of a female soldier, Sandi, in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve. She is to call home, and we writhe with feelings along with her, but more so with the writer, who’s fate seems intertwined with his subject’s.

The third story, “Sh’khol” is of Rebecca, a divorced woman with her autistic son on the coast of Ireland. She has bought for him a Christmas gift he covets - a wet suit - which he, of course, wants to test out immediately. She gives him some instruction, but the next morning awakes to an empty house. He’s disappeared along with the wet suit. Her despair is palpable, as the search moves into full swing, and again, the emotions are tangible.

The fourth and last tale, “Treaty” is of an aging nun, Beverly, who is confronted by her past - a violent rapist and jailer of 37 years earlier while in she was working in the poor in Columbia. He is now a diplomat working for peace and economic prosperity, a man of respect. But she knows the truth and must let him know that she knows who he really is. Beverly’s past remains a raw and bitter, constant memory; traits that make for a different kind of nun, but full of compassion, nonetheless.

While each of the stories may sound rather dismal, the joy is in the writing itself and McCann’s ability to authentically articulate what’s deep inside of us, and to convey that with such intensity is a gift. These are not at all contrived, and I somehow feel connected to the emotions whether I have experienced them or not.

Find out more at Beyond-Cover.com

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! A novel that leaves you rewarded for picking it up.
This is the first time I have read this author's work. Rarely do I experience such excellent prose for the entire duration. The writing is a perfect example of : "economy of language", "complex yet simple", "elegant prose".
This book is the reason I read. In fact, it is also the reason I, myself, write. His pacing of the reader is genius.
I found this book inspiring, stirring, rousing, stimulating and much much more.
And a few more things: sensitive, beautiful, soul-shattering, poignant and disturbing.
Loved it.
Sergiu Pobereznic (author)

The long title novella is obviously the focal point of Colum McCann's new collection, but I think it may actually be the weakest of the four stories. Its link to the Wallace Stevens poem is tangential and rather forced, and the play with the narrator's stream of consciousness, while effective on its own terms, detracts from rather than enhancing the power of the imminent act of violence around which the story is based. That act of violence ends up feeling over-determined, so freighted with thematic and political implication as to leave any kind of realism behind. And yet I enjoyed following the wandering thoughts of an elderly judge who is at once Jewish, Irish, and American, and on finishing the story, I felt exactly the frisson of enlightenment I was obviously meant to feel.

The three shorter stories are more consistently effective. It would be easy to dismiss "What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?" as having been cynically built around McCann's inability to actually write the story that had been requested, but again, he's enough of a stylist to achieve the desired sense of the paradoxical loneliness of a vast and crowded world. "Sh'khol," the best of these stories, at first seems likely to fall into the trap of the missing-child narrative: either the child will be found well or it will not, and either way the emotional implications are obvious. But McCann gives things an unexpected but entirely naturalistic twist that pays off the story's melancholy atmosphere perfectly. "Treaty," like "Thirteen Ways of Looking," takes an elderly character with an unusual biography toward an unexpected meeting rich in wider implications, but it's a more focused and intense story, one where the unlikely narrative mechanics of the ending are overshadowed by the sense of catharsis. Ultimately that's the level on which this collection works best: transcending the sometimes mundane and familiar content of its stories by artful evocation of the meanings that lie beneath. These are sad stories, even when they end happily, but therein lies their power.

This book is marketed as a short story collection, but it's really a short novel with three short stories thrown in as extras. The main work is a novel titled "Thirteen Ways of Looking," and it's about an 82-year-old trial court judge in New York City--Mr. Mendelssohn. In my copy (an ARC), the novel is 143 pages long, so fairly slender but still a novel, I think. This story is a beautiful character study of an elderly man and his struggle to come to terms with his failing body and unreliable mind. I loved this story, and McCann's writing is sensitive and illuminating. This novel is well worth reading and needn't be packaged with other stories to make it worthwhile (although the stories are great too).

Hailed as a writer of power and understated beauty, Colum McCann proves that the accolades heaped upon him are well deserved as he reveals the level of his mastery of the written word in this sterling collection.

Composed of a novella and three other stories, Thirteen Ways of Looking , takes the reader on a vicarious trip into various subjects as it addresses the trauma and reality of rape, old age, damaged children and writer’s block while also making side observations about emotions ranging from anger to regret. He even comments on the usually unseen plethora of cameras that capture for posterity practically every public aspect of our lives with his, “More cameras in the city than birds in the sky”. The ever shifting focus and perspective of these narratives sets forth the groundwork that allows us to draw our own conclusions as to the outcome of each of these gems.

Sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous and often filled with unanticipated twists and endless possibilities, these tales of fallible humanity will engage the reader’s imagination and linger in memory long after the final page is turned.

This is a collection of four short stories by Colum McCann. Each is as good as the others. The characters are all well-developed, which does not always happen with short stories.

McCann has such a lyrical way of writing that help to keep the reader involved in these dark stories. It was so wonderful to see where each of the stories was heading, even if the characters did not.

I would recommend this collection to everyone. I was given this book by NetGalley and Random House Publishing in exchange for my honest review.

Colum McCann is an extraordinary writer who has a unique style. He gives the reader astounding insight into his characters. In the first story especially, he describes the inner conversation of various characters with heartbreaking clarity.

It's a joy to read literature of this quality. Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Consisting of the excellent novella that is also the title of the collection plus three almost as well rendered shorter stories THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING is more great fiction from well regarded author Colum McCann. Major characters in all these tales are wonderfully complex and marvelously depicted by McCann. McCann has the gift of writing literary fiction that is also very acessible and will resonate with the average reader.

McCann is a masterful writer. I particularly appreciate an author that has a sense of story, as well as a command of the craft, and that would well describe Thirteen Ways of Looking. I though the pacing of the stories was particularly wonderful. A great read!

McCann is a first rate storyteller. His novels are all winners. This selection of short fiction stories are so well done and varied that I could never pick out one favorite. For McCann fans, and fans of the short story in general, this is truly a must have. Magnificent!

Colum McCann is truly a master of his craft. This is my first read of McCann’s library of work, but his evocative nature begs further discovery. In the midst of writing Thirteen Ways of Looking, McCann himself was attacked while trying to help a woman who had been assaulted, after which he suffered a broken cheekbone and teeth. He writes in the book’s Author’s Note, “Sometimes it seems to me that we are writing our lives in advance, but at other times we can only look back. In the end, though, every word we write is autobiographical, perhaps most especially when we attempt to avoid the autobiographical”. When you read the book, you’ll understand how poignant this statement is.

Thirteen Ways of Looking includes a novella and three short stories. The title is based upon the poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, of which McCann includes a stanza of the poem at the beginning of each section of the novella. The stories are quite different from one another, but the unifying theme is a strong sense of yearning and loneliness, vividly told.

In the title novella, 82-year old retired judge, Peter Mendelssohn lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is rather frail physically, but quite sharp mentally. Our view into his psyche is of intense loss and loneliness. He lost his wife years earlier and has a distant relationship with his garish son. He shares with us the small daily humiliations of the elderly that he suffers. When he ventures out on a cold, snowy New York day to meet his son for lunch, he’s disregarded as an old man, accosted by the weather, rude drivers, his callous son, then physically on the street outside the restaurant. There are several knots woven into the story in addition to his emotional isolation and attack. While the police investigate the assault, these threads begin to unfold in parallel.

The second story, “What Time Is It Now, Where Are You?” is about Joel, a writer with writer’s block, working on deadline, and creates a tale of a female soldier, Sandi, in Afghanistan on New Year’s Eve. She is to call home, and we writhe with feelings along with her, but more so with the writer, who’s fate seems intertwined with his subject’s.

The third story, “Sh’khol” is of Rebecca, a divorced woman with her autistic son on the coast of Ireland. She has bought for him a Christmas gift he covets - a wet suit - which he, of course, wants to test out immediately. She gives him some instruction, but the next morning awakes to an empty house. He’s disappeared along with the wet suit. Her despair is palpable, as the search moves into full swing, and again, the emotions are tangible.

The fourth and last tale, “Treaty” is of an aging nun, Beverly, who is confronted by her past - a violent rapist and jailer of 37 years earlier while in she was working in the poor in Columbia. He is now a diplomat working for peace and economic prosperity, a man of respect. But she knows the truth and must let him know that she knows who he really is. Beverly’s past remains a raw and bitter, constant memory; traits that make for a different kind of nun, but full of compassion, nonetheless.

While each of the stories may sound rather dismal, the joy is in the writing itself and McCann’s ability to authentically articulate what’s deep inside of us, and to convey that with such intensity is a gift. These are not at all contrived, and I somehow feel connected to the emotions whether I have experienced them or not.

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I was given an electronic copy by Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Thirteen Ways of Looking is a cluster of four stories, written by Colum McCann. The novella, which shares a title with the entire book, is the final day in the life of Judge Mendelssohn. As he goes about his morning business with the help of his nurse Sally, recollections of his past dominate his mind. How this day turns into the last is the real mystery. I found it interesting how the mystery is pieced together through a series of cameras, both at Mendlessohn's house and the restaurant at which he was visiting. I was not a fan of a certain part of the dialogue, however, as it was written in rambling form without distinction between speakers.

What Time Is It Now, Where Are You? is the story about a marine in Afghanistan waiting until midnight to call home on New Year's Eve. I found the story to be confusing, with more questions and few answers given.

Sh'kohl is the story about a mom and her adoptive son, a thirteen year old who was born deaf. After getting her son a wetsuit for Christmas, he goes out on his own and disappears. There is really only a very small plot for this story, which really just comprises of police officers hunting the surf for the missing boy.

Treaty is the story of Beverly, an elderly nun who gets a tremendous shock when watching the news on television. When Beverly was a younger nun and lived in South America, she was kidnapped and brutalized over long period of time by a man she called Carlos. When an opportunity presents itself, Beverly has now become the hunter instead of the hunted. I was not a fan of this story, as the ending ruined the book for me.

The novella was my favorite part of the book, as I found the story of Judge Mendlessohn to be the most compelling. That being said, it did not anchor the book and I found my mind wandering to other thoughts as I was reading. Perhaps there was some hidden meaning to these stories, but they did not interest me.