TRANSATLANTIC

Yesterday, I finished Colum McCann's most recent novel TransAtlantic. It is a novel that spans five generations, three wars, two countries while linking the story lines of numerous families.

More than anything, this book is about how we are all bound together. In that sense, it is very similar to Mr. McCann's prior novel Let the Great World Spin. That book is not quite required reading for TransAtlantic, but rather a continuation of similar themes.

We begin with a transatlantic crossing of men named Alcock and Brown in a plane in the early 20th century from Newfoundland to Ireland. Then, we are introduced to the freeman Frederick Douglass during his visit to Ireland in the 19th century. There, Douglass meets and inspires a young Irish maid named Lucy Duggan. Because of this meeting, Lucy decides to try her luck in America and make a better life for herself. The book continues with the story lines of Lucy's life in America and that of her descendants on both sides of the Pond. The latter stages of the book include the Irish peace process shepherded by George Mitchell that weaves in some of Lucy's descendants.

Only a bold writer could tackle such a storyline, and McCann is up to the task. His own life took him on a transatlantic journey from Ireland to America, so he has a firsthand appreciation for what many of these characters went through.

As an immigrant, myself, I empathized with many of these characters. My migration might have only been transnational, but this book gave me an even greater respect and appreciation for my parents. They scarified everything and moved not once but twice (first from India to Canada and then later tot he US) to give us the greatest opportunities possible on this earth.

It is fitting that this book is really about shared experience and how we become the people whom we will become. There are two passages in particular that leaped out to me. McCann writes, "What was life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves of incident. Stacked at odd angles to each other."

Near the end of the book, McCann also writes, "The tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We return to those lives of those that have gone before us, a perplexing mobius strip until we come home, eventually, to ourselves," and "we seldom know what echo our actions will find, but our stories will most certainly outlast us."

Let us all appreciation the twists and turns that our lives take - both good and bad - for our life and our individual character are forged of both.