TransAtlantic

A Novel

By: Colum McCann

Narrated by: Geraldine Hughes

Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-seller. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Review.

In the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called "an emotional tour de force". Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.

Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators - Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown - set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War.

Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause - despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave.

New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion.

These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory.

The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with each passing year.

Praise for TransAtlantic:

“A dazzlingly talented author’s latest high-wire act.... Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham, TransAtlantic is Colum McCann’s most penetrating novel yet.” (O: The Oprah Magazine)

©2013 Colum McCann (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"This novel is beautifully hypnotic in its movements, from the grand (between two continents, across three centuries) to the most subtle. Silkily threading together public events and private feelings, TransAtlantic says no to death with every line." (Emma Donoghue)

"A masterful and profoundly moving novel that employs exquisite language to explore the limits of language and the tricks of memory...epic in ambition...audacious in format." (Kirkus Reviews)

"A beautiful writer... This is what interests McCann: lives made amid and despite violence; the hidden braids of places, times, and people; the way the old days ‘arrive back in the oddest ways.’" (Publishers Weekly)

Unique traits of characters making them lovable

He beautifully weaves this historical saga together through connections each character has with another covering 100 years.

Deep layers of emotions/motives within characters

"Only connect . . ." So does McCann

Connect his characters tHat the reader is in awe.

Be ready for some research to fully appreciate the fine weaving, the marvelous characters, the historic figures and events. Do keep a dictionary nearby for this author's range of words. Beautifully read with a natural Irish accent, lyrical, gentle, strong. Wonderful book for discussion of Story.

Top five best audiobooks I've ever heard

Geraldine Hughes captured each voice PERFECTLY. McCann tells a story of four generations of women whose lives are woven into the fabric of Irish history. It is never preachy or predictable. He tells a story like a poet or even a painter using words like brush strokes. Maybe an even better analogy is song because in the voice of Ms. Hughes the book has a lyrical quality to it. Meanwhile, far more than a simple family history, Transatlantic is almost an elegy, a meditation, a memoir or reflection on grief, loss, war, freedom, pilgrimage. There aren't words to describe the beauty of this book because McCann himself would have to write them.

Life changing.

Amazing book with language that will break your heart and bring every thought to life.

Excellent

This was another very well written book by McCann. His exquisite literary talent is refreshing in this day and age.

Too breathtaking to read just once...

If you could sum up TransAtlantic in three words, what would they be?

Year's best book.

What did you like best about this story?

I fell in love with the marvelous word-craft of Colum McCann when I read AS THE GREAT WORLD TURNS. Like that award-winning book, the is a book with many threads, many nuances, many colors. All of it is glorious. What I love best about this story is the entrancing language. As I've told everyone I can get my hands on, I read this book in just two days because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. But I shall read it again, starting today, this time at a more meditative pace, the better to immerse myself in the McCann's language, his pacing, his art. What a writer!!!

Have you listened to any of Geraldine Hughes’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I do not recall hearing Geraldine Hughes prior to this book, but I will be researching her other narratives. She is absolutely spot-on, the BEST, the ONLY person they could have chosen for this book. Like a true pro, she embodies each character, both men and women, black, white, Irish, British, old and young, in such a way that I never once thought I was listening to a book--I was simply in it.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

One of my favorite books ever, certainly among the best I've read so far in 2013. As far as laughing or crying, I listened to the final chapter while making dinner. As the last few paragraphs were coming up (and I didn't know they were the last), I found myself standing over the kitchen sink, tears running down my face. I felt grief-stricken, yet so imbued with love and gratitude for all the grace that life, in its terrors, does offer us. That's what Colum McCann can do to you.

As soon as the last word was read, I immediately back-tracked to listen to the last chapter again. Today, I am starting the book over from Chapter 1--and this time I'll take it slow, savoring every sinewy sentence that McCann has so beautifully created.

Simply beautiful.

Any additional comments?

As I said above, read it once for the terrific tale. Read it again immediately after for the grand language, a truly marvelous effort from McCann.

Yeah...let me skip to the crux of it...JUST BUY IT!

Historical fiction with a philosophical message

Close your eyes and picture me smiling.

That is me after finishing this book. I was so very satisfied, pleased, happy. I think this book is fantastic.

McCann has perfect dialogs, be they set centuries earlier or two years ago. His books do demand that you pay close attention, but they deliver a message that is worth the reader's effort. He skillfully interweaves historical events into fiction. His characters come alive. Every single sentence has a purpose. His ability to put the reader in another time or place cannot be improved upon. I absolutely love his writing.

You may choose this book to learn about the Abolitionist Movement or Suffragist Movement or the Good Friday Accords or Transatlantic navigation or to understand how "there isn't a story in the world that isn't addressed to the past." What does that tell us in how we should live our own lives?


I listened to the audiobook narration by Geraldine Hughes. Me, I love the Irish dialect. Perfect.

Boring

It is very rare for me to want to stop mid way through a story and even consider returning the book. I plodded through this wondering what all the fuss was about.
The story itself was disjointed and the characters thinly developed. The women of the story would have made for a more captivating take in the right hands. Unfortunately each of the women's lives were sketchily outlined. A short passage about George Mitchell, the senator who brokered the peace plan between England and Ireland was totally out of place and did nothing except connect the women.
Maybe I am not interested enough in Ireland to be compelled by this tale. But this book did nothing to spike my interest.

Excellent

If you could sum up TransAtlantic in three words, what would they be?

Irish generational saga

What other book might you compare TransAtlantic to and why?

Colum McCann is a wonderful writer and the beautiful writing in TransAtlantic compares very well with his Let the Great World Spin. The opening chapter - the flight - is as poetic as DeLilllo's World Series baseball chapter in Underworld. As far as the story, it is similar to The Son by Phillip Meyers, which is a Texas generational saga. TransAtlantic is better.

What about Geraldine Hughes’s performance did you like?

Fabulous! A good reader can make the book even more enjoyable, and Ms. Hughes certainly did that for me.

If you could take any character from TransAtlantic out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Lotte because of her interesting life.

Another masterful story by McCann

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. I love the way McCann weaves so many seemingly unrelated threads into a single, cohesive narrative.

What other book might you compare TransAtlantic to and why?

Let the Great World Spin