This Side of Brightness by
Colum McCann

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Set in underground Manhattan, past and present, Colum McCann's second novel is a magnificent blend of imagination and history. In the early years of the century, Nathan Walker leaves the Okefenokee swamps of his native Georgia for New York City and the most dangerous job in America. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the underground tunnel that will carry trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed the sandhogs - black, white, Irish, Italian - dig together; above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will bless and curse the next three generations. Years later, Treefrog, a homeless man driven below by a shameful secret, endures a punishing winter deep in his subway nest. In tones ranging from bleak to dark to disturbingly funny, Treefrog recounts his strategies of survival - killing rats, scavenging for soda cans, washing in the snow, sleeping through the cold - in New York's netherworld. Between Nathan Walker and Treefrog stretch seventy years of ill-fated loves, unintended crimes, and social taboos. In a triumph of plotting, the two stories fuse to form a tale of family, race, and redemption that is as beautifully constructed as it is masterfully told. In This Side of Brightness, Colum McCann delivers a novel as bold and fabulous as New York City itself.
Born in Dublin, Colum McCann is the author of the highly acclaimed Songdogs, a novel, nominated for the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Fishing the Sloe-Black River, a story collection, which received the Rooney Award for Irish Literature and the Hennessey Award for Best First Fiction. He has worked as a journalist, teacher, rancher, and wilderness guide but now concentrates on writing fiction and screenplays. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Here's what the members of the Reading Group based at our Raheny branch library think of This Side of Brightness:

This is a story of darkness and light, heights and depths, both psychological and physical. It is the story over 70 years, of three generations of one family whose lives are entwined in the building of the New York subway, the soaring skyscrapers above them, and finally and most poignantly the story of the people who made their homes in these tunnels, often yards from oblivious commuters, told over one bitter winter. This, the story of the tunnel dwellers is to me the most powerful and compelling strand in the book. The book is based on fact and seems to me to be extremely well researched. Mr. McCann makes an acknowledgement to "the men and women of the tunnels.who allowed me into their lives and their homes." and I am completely convinced of the reality of their situation. Treefrog engages our sympathies and teaches us how easy it is for someone to fall from the light into darkness. Though perhaps the story "topside" in the everyday world is a bit over-dramatic and unreal. I found this a fascinating novel on many levels - character, social history, powerful poetic descriptions and shall look forward to reading more of Mr. McCann's work.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)

The title puzzles me - I found very little brightness in the story, which describes, very graphically the degradation, cruelty, loneliness and hopelessness endured by the poor and down and outs of New York, in the 20th century. The writer uses the language of his characters, mainly crude and coarse. His descriptions of life in the tunnels convince me that he has been there and tells it as it is. A very sympathetic story told by the writer.
(Member of Raheny Library Group)

This novel tells the story of how the sub-ways of New York were built, and the lives of those that built it. Specifically it relates to a tale of one particular 'sandhog', an immensely powerful black man who, with a small group of immigrants, has the job of digging under the river to join Manhattan with the mainland. His life and those of his children and grand-children are told with poignant detail. The dangers, poverty and discrimination suffered by this family in New York during the last century are hard to bear. However, the story is utterly compelling and beautifully written. The author begins the novel by describing the daily existence of a 'down-and-out' living in a cave in a sub-way in the freezing winter of 1991. We have to wait until towards the very end of the book to discover what relation there is between this rather pathetic middle-aged amn who had once worked building scaffolding for the sky-scrapers of the city, and Nathon Walker, the sub-way 'sandhog'.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)