Flying across the centuries

I’ve been yearning for a book like this.

For too many weeks, I’ve been reading books that were disappointing, banal, or even pretty good. But I’ve been craving a wonderful book—one that would pull me in, delight me with its style, engage me with its story.

Transatlantic is such a novel. It is superb on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. Author Colm McCann, who won the 2009 National Book Award for his tour de force, Let the Great World Spin, has worked his magic again. He tells seven stories whose characters and themes interconnect, stitching connections between Ireland and America through a century and a half.

The first three accounts honor heroes whose imagination and persistence expand horizons. In 1919, Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown, British World War I veterans, kit out a Vickers Vimy (“a modified bomber, all wood and linen and wire”) and, against all odds, make the first transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. (Eight years later, Lindbergh would garner all the praise, because he made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.) The social landscape of Ireland and the towering figure of abolitionist Frederick Douglass dominate the second tale. In 1845, Douglass made a lecture tour through Ireland and England, raising awareness about the scourge of slavery and raising funds for abolitionist groups in the United States. The final character to push back at boundaries is former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who helped broker the peace between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

All three stories are anchored in history, but McCann’s magic is making the players real as well as heroic. The vivid details plunge us into the historic periods and also help us fully imagine the lives of these pioneering men.

As wonderful as their tales are, the stories in the second part of the book are even more powerful. Four generations of women—Irish and American—intersect with the men depicted in the book’s first section, mostly in small, seemingly insignificant ways. Yet, it is through the lens of these women—Lily, Emily, Lotte, Hannah—that we see clearly the cross-cutting paths of history, both large and personal. There are the usual milestones of life: marriage, children,  hardship, sorrow, death. Throughout it all, the women persevere and demonstrate their own kind of quiet heroism.

And the ending of this book is one of the most beautiful moments of grace I have ever encountered. It is a perfect Mobius strip for the entire sweep of the novel.

McCann’s style sometimes stops you in your tracks—and sometimes just sweeps you along in the power of story. So, yes, this book has been a joy to read. I want to start it over again.