Everything in This Country Must [Import] [Hardcover]

Colum McCann (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 143 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix House (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897580398
• ISBN-13: 978-1897580394
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,421,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in thirty languages. He has been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was the inaugural winner of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire's "Best and Brightest," and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything in this Country Must a Must, March 14, 2000

By 

Michael Cowgill (Manassas, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories (Hardcover)

Colum McCann, one of the finest young writers in Ireland & Amreica continues to grace us with this corageous book. Not just corageous for the obvious subject, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but its deeper one -- the connections between the life around us (political and otherwise) and the life inside us. At its center is not so much the Troubles but the depths and power of love -- love for country, for God, for family and for one's self. These loves are at odds with one another. The narrator of the title story loves her father and lost mother and brother, yet she feels drawn to the young English soldier who helps them save their horse, and very well may have caused the accident that killed her mother and brother. The mother in "Wood" must decide between her love for her invalid husband and her Protestant identity, and tries to balance them. And in "Hunger Strike" a boy's coming of age through his uncle's and country's political strife is guided and challenged by adults who wish to protect him and soothe his rage. This is not the "All You Need is Love" kind of love. This is deep, spritual, love -- the thing binds us and breaks us, and McCann is brave for tackling this within a political context and a world that often values surface issues instead of, to paraphrase Norman McClean, the river that runs through us.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A little great book!, March 2, 2001

By 

Maria Pia Capozzoli - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories (Hardcover)

Northern Ireland, with its troubled history and its extreme enviroment, is an easy subject for second-rate writers, and actually you can find a lot of would-be thrillers, unlikely to get a second edition.

For the same reason, Northern Ireland is a difficoult subject for good writers. That's why you can find many interesting non-fiction books, but really few good novels.

With "Everything in this country must" Colum McCann proves once again to be a great writer. While reading it, I was nearly overwhelmed by emotions. And I was amazed by both the simplicity and the effectivness of his writing.

It's a little book, just 150 pages. You could read it in two hours. But because it's a great book I would suggest you to read it very, very slowly, enjoying every word, every line, every emotion. And in so doing, may be you happen to realize that McCann is deceiving all of us: he writes poems disguised as short stories.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Purchase this book now!, March 25, 2000

By 

Gary Silk - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories (Hardcover)

This is one of the few books of its genre that I actually enjoyed. The characters and settings simply jump out of the pages at you and make you see so vidly everything that the author is attempting to convey.

I can't think of a single part of this book where I wasn't completely mesmerized by both the intelligent way the characters and plots weren't handling in an intelligent and poignant manner.

BRAVO!