3 Review(s)

Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic is a historical novel about several episodes across history and their relations with the past. Summary of the Book McCann ties together several stories to show how history reaches into the present to affect our lives. In Newfoundland, 1919, Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown are two aviators setting course for Ireland. This is the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. These two men believe in the airworthiness of a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War. Years earlier in Dublin, between 1845 and 1846, Frederick Douglass is on an international lecture tour for his subversive autobiography. He discovers that the Irishmen are inclined towards the abolitionist cause, even in the face of the famine that belittles the suffering of an American slave. In 1998, New York, Senator George Mitchell leaves for Belfast. He must guide Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion. As the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, his lineage seems to have primed him for this one episode in his life. Across time itself, these stories blend to tell one tale, that of a series of astounding women whose own tales reflect the progress of history and the shape it takes. About Colum McCann Colum McCann is an Irish novelist and short-story writer. He has also written Songdogs, This Side of Brightness, Dancer, Zoli and Let the Great World Spin. He was awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award in 2002. He has also co-founded the global U.S.-based charity, Narrative 4, with a group of other writers, educators and social activists.