"This side of brightness" by Colum McCann

 From the first few lines you can tell that you are in the presence of a writer of quality.

In 1916, Nathan Walker is digging the first railway tunnel under the river in New York when a seal fails and he and two others are blown by compressed air up through the river; a fourth man dies. In 1991, Treefrog lives in the abandoned tunnels under the city. This book, a tribute to the working men who risk their lives on a daily basis to build our cities, and a chronicle of the heartbreak of everyday life, traces and connects these two men.

We had a brilliant discussion about this book at the Grove Theatre book club. One of our members felt 'tricked' by the author because she had been enticed (seduced? groomed?) into liking Treefrog before discovering his guilty secret, she then realised that Nathan could be guilty of the same failing which was of such a nature that she couldn't, or wouldn't, see it as a weakness but as an absolute irredeemable moral sin; two other members felt the revelation of this secret was 'contrived'. I disagree. It seems to me that Treefrog was driven underground by his guilt at what he perceives as his flaw and that the whole narrative is leading up to his confession and potential redemption. One could interpret his time underground as time in a very Dantesque purgatory. 

Indeed, the whole book could be seen as a religious allegory. It starts with a type of resurrection, as Nathan escapes from his tube underground to shoot upwards through water into the air; it could be an allegory of birth, or of rebirth through baptism. And there are the tunnels, which are hellish, where the lost souls dwell (the obsessive behaviour of Treefrog is a very Dantean interpretation of the interminability of hell), and there are the skyscrapers reaching towards heaven. And there are the ordinary men and women, living their ordinary lives, doing right and doing wrong.  And, in the end, there is confession and at least the possibility of redemption.

It is also a book about how the world in which we live has been built on the toil of its underclass. Nathan labours underground to construct the tunnels for the subway system. Clarence sacrifices an eye soldiering for his country. Treefrog, when younger, built skyscrapers. As the song says:

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun

Brick and rivet and lime

Once I built a tower, now it's done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell

Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum

Half a million boots went slogging through Hell

And I was the kid with the drum

Say, don't you remember? They called me 'Al'

It was 'Al' all the time

Why don't you remember? I'm your pal

Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Furthermore, I think that the way the author leads you through the story is masterful. The first hint of Treefrog's problem is subtly brushed into the narrative; even at the end when it becomes clearer, there are still ambiguities about what he did and why he did it. Subtlety is a hallmark of this book. He could make much more of the thesis that the city of New York was built on the toil of its underclass. He could go to town on the racism experienced by Nathan and Eleanor. Instead, he concentrates on his characters, all of whom are fundamentally good (there is no place for the doctrine of original sin in this novel) but with weaknesses, many of whom are destroyed by the pressures imposed upon them by society.

We also had a discussion about why the author chose a dual narrative, jumping backwards and forwards between time frames. A part of this was, of course, to create suspense as the reader tries to work out the exact connection between Nathan and Treefrog. But, more than that, I think there are intended to be parallels. Both of them toil to create the infrastructure that the city takes for granted. Both of them are ostracised by society for their love. 

What a book! I fully intend to read more books by this author.

Selected quotes:

• "They arrive at dawn in their geography of hats. A dark field of figures, stalks in motion, bending towards the docklands." (Ch 2)
• "If, at that time, Treefrog had made a map of the beats of his heart, the contours would have been so close together that the lines would almost have touched one another in the steepest and finest of gradations." (Ch 5)
• "Everybody is due despair in their lives, she says, and therefore everybody needs a remedy - it's a fact of life and it only costs two dollars to cure, a guaranteed bargain." (Ch 6)
• "They move like two chiaroscurists above the covers, black and white, white and black, then sleep under foreheads wet with sweat." (Ch 6)
• "The dust slips through the candlelight and descends lazily, landing on the spiderlimbs of wax at the base of the candles." (Ch 9)
• "There's a grave inside all of us." (Ch 9)

This is a book full of the joy and pain of everyday life.

September 2023; 239 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God