Customer Reviews

Songdogs

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the best I've read in years. Hums with a dreamy atmosphere--glimpses of reality in a fog of rememberance. Writing is wonderful, story absorbing, characters real and more. A great companion to "So Long, See You Tommorrow," by Wm.Maxwell. Similar to "All the Pretty Horses," but better, I think. Few books make me want to push them onto friends--this one did.

Mr McCann portrays a young man, Conor Lyons, visiting his ageing father Michael during six days in Mayo, Ireland. During these six days - they seem like the days of the Creation indeed - Conor retraces his father's epic life from his early childhood after the first World War when he was just a bundle of abandoned skin and rescued by two Protestant ladies who raised him. Later, when the ladies died, Michael sold their property and developed a strong passion for photography. He sold his prints to various newspapers. In 1939 he went to Madrid and subsequently to Mexico where he married Juanita. Obsessed with the beauty of her body, Michael took hundreds of pictures of her in various stages of nudity. These photos became a strong point of discord between them in later years and they're the probable cause for Juanita's vanishing 11 years before Conor's account. After that they moved to California, Wyoming and New York before finally returning back to Ireland.
It is the impressive tale of a son retracing his parents' long journey in order to try to find his mother again. It is also the story of a son witnessing the physical decay of his old father rotting in his own dirt and whose sole preoccupation in old age is fishing. A formidable novel by the best contemporary Irish novelist.

I enjoyed this book. It is not your typical book with conflict and tension leading to a climax and then resolution. If you go in expecting that of Songdogs, you'll be sorely disappointed. Instead, go into this book looking for a journey and then sit back and enjoy the journey Songdogs takes you through. The characters and images are very well put together. The writing is so evocative at times, that I could smell the dust and feel the sun on my back as they built the wall. The writing is excellent. Colum has a wonderful gift for transporting you into the lives of his characters. This book will give you a nice introduction to Colum and his writing.

In "Songdogs: A Novel", Colum McCann is stylistically closest to Cormac McCarthy's critically acclaimed novels set in the modern American West, but unlike McCarthy, he has crafted a tale that is not as rich emotionally. Without question, McCann's most redeeming trait herein is the fine quality of his lyrical prose. But still he tells a fascinating tale about photographer Michael Lyons, his wife Juanita, and their son Conor within the span of a short tome that's more a novella than a novel. I agree with at least one other Amazon.com reviewer who has noted that McCann has probably written better fiction - for me the most obvious example is his fictional tribute to dancer Rudolf Nureyev in "Dancer: A Novel", but "Songdogs" is a fine start to a promising literary career that is still unfolding.

McCann has probably already written better books. In this one, which reads throughout like thinly disguised autobiography, he retraces places of his parents' marriage. The story is told mostly in flashback as he visits his dying father in the ramshackle Irish hometown and broken down house where he grew up. Mom (Mam) has long since and wisely fled for parts unknown and based on the description of the old man here it's hard to tell what she saw in him. Intoxicated by his craft and his mastery of words, McCann rarely lets the story tell itself. Once he learns to rein in his tendency to pose on the page, I suspect he'll be fine. Check out his later work to find out, but you can miss Songdogs.

One of the only novels I've actually reread immediately because I didn't want it to end. Would make an amazing film.

A tiny bitten over-written at times and yet ot still manages to be profound and beautiful and even, on occassion, harsh. The last 50 pages are pure classic. Truly unforgettable. Someone should make a film of this novel.

Having just finished Let The Great World Spin, which I loved, I was very much looking forward to Songdogs. I won't say I was disappointed, because it is definitely worthwhile. It does however, read like a first novel-- albeit from a writer with great gifts and promise.

Songdogs is rife with portentous symbolism. Mom is building a wall (actual and emotional). Dad (former self-absorbed artist) is now obsessed with fly fishing for his Great Pink Salmon (Irish Ahab) in (of course)an offal polluted river (carcasses of his relationships) that the son returning home has to swim through in a cathartic moment. And oh yeah, there is a ritual bath in the end--son cleansing dad. All of the cliches tend to pile up in a big heap toward the end and at times you want to shout "I get it! I get it!."

What saves Songdogs is McCann's beautiful prose and sharp insights into people who are damaged by life or their loved ones. Juanita's slow emotional dissolution is well-handled and Conor's yearning for answers and resolution rings true.

Occasionally the author seems as though he is showing off how many obscure variations of words he knows. Women are entropic in their chalcedony shifts, not just tired in a dingy white dress--but okay, got that out of your system?

It was also a pleasure to see how some of the themes the were predominate in LTGWS appear in this first work. One line in particular stands out: "The world rotates on an axis of what-ifs." It is this ability to accept life's impermanence and disappointment with a bit of grace that helps us to see beyond to something that might be described as evanescent joy. It is nicely introduced here, and will be picked up and honed in later works.

I thought the writing was awful precious, but no tension, no story ... just nice writing