Fishing The Sloe-Black River (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Publisher Says: The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing poetry and peace found in the mundane: a memory, a scent on the wind, the grace in the curve of a street. Fishing the Sloe-Black River is a work of pure augury, of the channeling and re-spoken lives of people exposed to the beauty of the everyday.My Review: Twelve stories written by an Irish-by-Irish-American talent whose work garnered praise from no less a short story luminary than Edna O'Brien. Justly so, may I add.These are stories that go down easy, slipping into the eyes with no great effort and causing the brain no hiccups. Then, an hour later, why are they repeating like uncooked garlic? Because, dear readers of them, you've been *snookered*!McCann's characters are delineated deftly, his settings established economically, and his stories told without fuss. But the end result is more than the sum of its parts. An example, decribing Flaherty the Irishman living in New Orleans, from "Step We Gaily, On We Go":Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive. Should write that one on the stairwell, he chuckles to himself as he shuffles down the rat-gray steps of the apartment complex. He walks slowly, his big shoulders pitching back and forth in the folds of an old brown overcoat. Thick fists, blotched here and there with liver spots, pop out from the cuffs and a magenta handkerchief sprouts from the breast pocket. Beads of sweat gather beneath the peak of his flat tweed cap as he negotiates the corner on the third floor. Damn, he thinks, it's hot under this whole rigout.A washed up has-been boxer, Flaherty? Or a never-was dreamer? A lonely old man, surely, but why? What happened here? This is my favorite story in the collection, and I use it as an example of what I think McCann does best: He gives you the picture, and lets you decide what interests you most about it. Most short stories aren't that good, frankly, because they're just exactly the wrong length to do anything well, except in the hands of the talented."Cathal's Lake", the final story in the collection, is my runner-up favorite and would be even if only for its first line: "It's a sad Sunday when a man has to dig another swan from the soil." Cathal, a dirt farmer of no notable qualities, and his dog Wingnut are spending their morning digging up swans, see, and Cathal's mind (such as it is) wanders into some strange reveries...soldiers in battle, teen toughs in battle..."All this miraculous hatred. Christ, a man can't eat his breakfast for filling his belly full of it." It's sad to say that this is an evergreen trope in our world, this mindless exploration of anger and hate in calm and peace. It's a good story. It's a good collection. I'd recommend it to anyone whose desire is to see *just enough* of a story and a character and a setting to get the story, but still want to hear the tale. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Getting/giving a book that wasn’t asked for by an author you/they don’t know can be pretty tricky, to say the least. A great aunt I love and admire gave me this one Christmas and I had zero interest to crack it open. Eventually I did and I couldn’t stop kicking myself to waiting so long to dig into such a powerful collection of stories. Each story has a unique style, writing voice and McCann can be funny and devastating with equal aplomb in some truly original premises. I was influenced by this to try and alter my own writing style but didn’t improve a bit. This is a really a wonderful little book worth you checking out.
What do You think about Fishing The Sloe-Black River (2004)?
I am a huge fan of short stories, and I enjoy the variety of voices found in a collection of stories, as opposed to a novel. That said, it is rare that I am completely taken with every voice presented in a collection, and even more rare that I find individual stories to be as compelling and rich as a good novel. This is probably the best collection of short stories I have encountered to date. Every character is complex and intriguing, and each story involves a twist not easy to accomplish in the space provided. I now have to read everything McCann has written. This should be a fun ride.
—Erin
This, McCann's debut short story collection, is the last of his books that I've read, and while not perhaps as consistent as some of his later work, it shows the promise that he has since fulfilled, and has enough in it to make the collection worth reading.The 12 stories are told mainly in the first person, but are widely varied in content. There are male and female protagonists, both old and young, and settings vary between different areas of USA and Ireland. Highlights I particularly enjoyed included the tale of the Japanese wallpaperer living in a small town in postwar Ireland, and 'From Many, One', when a husband learns something new abut his wife. I found 'Breakfast for Enrique', about an Irish fish gutter, living in SF, caring for his ailing partner particularly touching. There are a number of other strongpoints in the collection, and while I didn't buy the magical realism of the title story, those who have enjoyed McCann's later work won't go wrong by checking this collection out.
—Allan
