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Cargando... Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Storiespor Colum McCann
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. McCann has a terrible gift with the words, so he does. This collection of two short stories and a novella is powerful, disturbing, brilliant but ultimately unsatisfying for me. The title selection has a straightforward beginning, middle and end, which I confess to admiring. But the ending, which I certainly saw coming, does not make sense to me on an emotional level. The novella and two stories in this slim book are set in Ireland and peripherally deal with The Troubles. Each features a teenaged protagonist hose life is somehow affected by the lingering residue of the hatred between Catholics and Protestants. In "Wood," young Sam and his mother must hide from his blind father the contribution they are making to a political march. The title story depicts the confusion of a girl whose father would rather lose his draft horse than owe a debt of gratitude to the British soldiers who try to save it. And in "Hunger Strike," a coming-of-age story, a boy rages against the disruption caused by the family moving from north to south for 'safety.' Always in the background, always presuring the foreground are the ongoing religious and political divisions that plague the Irish. A very fast read, but--as usual--McCann's lyrical prose demands close attention.
The two stories and novella that make up Colum McCann's very slim ''Everything in This Country Must'' seem to be a way of dealing with Ireland's sectarian conflict by coming at it sideways. That's not to say McCann has chosen the route of fable or metaphor. The battles between Protestant and Roman Catholic are alluded to in these three selections, but the characters seem to experience it all from a distance, or as part of a past that sits in the midst of their day-to-day experience like a lump of dry bread in the throat, impossible to digest or ignore. Contiene
Una chiquilla siente que tiene que escoger entre la obediencia a su padre católico o la gratitud a los soldados británicos que han salvado su yegua. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Chat del autorColum McCann conversó con los miembros de LibraryThing desde las Mar 1, 2010 hasta las Mar 14, 2010. Lee el chat. Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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The first story -- "Everything in This Country Must" -- tells of a British army patrol that happens on a man and his daughter attempting to rescue their horse drowning in the river. The brave efforts of the soldiers, at no small risk to themselves, is appreciated by the girl, but not by her father who threatens them as they depart. His anger shows how the attitude of the people toward the presence of the British army had evolved.
The second story -- "Wood" -- refers to the annual parade of Protestant Orangemen through the streets of Derry, Belfast, and other cities. The paraders carry banners with anti-catholic slogans. It commerates the victory of Protestant King William over Catholic King James in 1691. The parades are perceived by the Catholic population as insulting and an arrogant symbol of Protestant supremacy. (I witnessed our Protestant neighbor proudly dressed in his parade regalia on the eve of the march.) The marchers needed wood poles to display their banners and called on a family of skillful workworkers to make them. The head of the household had been incapacitated by a stroke and, although a Protestant himself, loathed the annual parades for all they represented. His wife and young son surreptiously gathered the materials and made the poles for the income they would bring. He embodied the rejection of sectarianism felt by many, but his helplessness symbolized how the forces of hatred prevailed.
The novella -- "Hunger Strike -- is told from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy from Derry who is staying with his widowed mother in the Republic (somewhere it seems on the west coast near Galway). His uncle, who he has never met, is imprisoned in Prison Maze at Long Kesh for his suspected IRA activities. The uncle and others had begun a campaign of hunger strikes to protest the refusal of the British authorities to recognize them as prisoners of war as opposed to suspected common criminals. This resulted in a number of starvation deaths that received major media attention across the world. The boy is extremely obsessed his uncle's slow death, even to charting what he believes to the the steady weight loss. He seethes with anger, fantasizing about the actions he would take in response. He meets an elderly couple who introduce him to kayaking in the bay and repays their kindness in an unexpected way that speaks to his troubled state of mind. ( )