Songdogs

by Colum McCann

Book Overview

Colum McCann creates in Songdogs a mesmerizing evocation of the gulf between memory and imagination, love and loss, past and present.

With unreliable memories and scraps of photographs as his only clues, Conor Lyons follows in the tracks of his father, a rootless photographer, as he moved from war-torn Spain, to the barren plains of Mexico, where he met and married Conor's mother, to the American West, and finally back...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312147414
• ISBN13: 9780312147419
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A remarkable achievement

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.

Cannot go wrong

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

Fantastic Journey

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.

Excellent

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.