Gone
(By Colum McCann)
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| Author | Colum McCann |
Few fiction writers today are as loved and admired as Colum McCann—for his soul-stirring prose, his high-wire narratives, his understanding that in life’s small, everyday moments, there is magic.
Author of the New York Times bestsellers “Let the Great World Spin” and “Transatlantic,” McCann has been called “a giant among us” (Peter Carey), “dazzlingly talented” ( The Oprah Magazine), and “that rare species in contemporary a literary writer who is an exceptional storyteller” (The Independent). He’s received a National Book Award, an Oscar nomination, and a slew of international prizes.
His talents are on full display in his new short story, “Gone,” a deeply affecting literary thriller about a mother and son, alone in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland, and the search that ensues when the boy—whom she adopted years before, deaf and with “already a whole history written in him”—goes missing. He slips away in early morning, down to the cold sea with his new Christmas wetsuit, and as the hours and days drag on, the coast guard, police, dogs, fishermen, farmers, and schoolchildren holding hands search the sea and walk the fields while the television crews and detectives come and go, the police at the cottage seeming to “ghost into one almost as if they could slip into one another’s faces.”
The mother, Rebecca, now under suspicion, is racked with guilt over the decisions that led to her son’s disappearance, and tormented by the judgment of "You bought what? A wetsuit? Why in the world? What sort of mother? How much wine did you drink?" For Rebecca, “every outcome was unwhisperable.”
“Gone” is a charged narrative that propels you forward, heart in your throat, and a moving, intimate look at life’s struggles toward grace and a kind of redemption.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colum McCann was born in Ireland in 1965. He is the author of two collections of stories and six novels, including the international bestsellers “Transatlantic” and “Let the Great World Spin,” for which he won the National Book Award. He has also been the recipient of the International Impac Dublin award, a Chevalier of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, an Oscar nomination, and several other literary awards. His work has been published in more than thirty-five languages. He lives in New York with his wife, Allison, and their three children and teaches in the M.F.A. program at Hunter College.
PRAISE FOR COLUM McCANN
“A damned lot of fun to read.” —Dave Eggers, author of “The Circle” and “A Hologram for the King”
“Here is the uncanny thing McCann finds again and again about the that it is inseparable from the everyday.” —The Boston Globe
“Fiction that gets the heart thumping.” —Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes” and “Tis”
“This is McCann’s gift, finding grace in grief and magic in the mundane, and immersing the reader in these thoroughly.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“McCann’s heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow.” —Entertainment Weekly
“If God is in the details, then McCann is surely close to heaven.” —St. Petersburg Times
“Colum McCann is a giant among us—fearless, huge-hearted, a poet with every living breath.” —Peter Carey, author of “Oscar and Lucinda” and “The True History of the Kelly Gang”
“There is magic in this McCann.” —The Baltimore Sun
“[McCann] lends a forgiving tenderness that invigorates the timeless notion that we are not really all that different under the skin, each of us longing for love, for beauty, for those connections that quell our loneliness.” —Bookpage
“An arresting voice … at once deep and dazzling.” —Edna O’Brien, author of “Saints and Sinners” and “Country Girl””
