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Mother of Sorrows
In these ten interwoven stories, two adolescent brothers face a world in which their father has suddenly died, a world dominated by their beautiful and complicated mother. Thirty years later, one of the brothers–the only remaining survivor of a family he seeks both to leave behind and to preserve in words forever–narrates these precise and heartbreaking tales. Suffused with the beauty of Richard McCann’s extraordinary language, Mother of Sorrows introduces us to an elegant writer like no other in contemporary fiction.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Richard McCann
28 books27 followersRichard McCann was a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.
A gay writer,[1] he was the author of Mother of Sorrows, a collection of linked stories. It won the 2005 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares and was also an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award recipient, as well as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Amazon named it one of the Top 50 Books of 2005.
McCann's book of poems, Ghost Letters, won the 1994 Beatrice Hawley and Capricorn Poetry awards. With Michael Klein, he edited Things Shaped in Passing: More 'Poets for Life' Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in The Atlantic," Esquire, Ms., Tin House, Ploughshares, and numerous anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007, Best American Essays 2000, and The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the Yaddo Corporation. In 2010, he was the Master Artist at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL
A gay writer,[1] he was the author of Mother of Sorrows, a collection of linked stories. It won the 2005 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares and was also an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award recipient, as well as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Amazon named it one of the Top 50 Books of 2005.
McCann's book of poems, Ghost Letters, won the 1994 Beatrice Hawley and Capricorn Poetry awards. With Michael Klein, he edited Things Shaped in Passing: More 'Poets for Life' Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in The Atlantic," Esquire, Ms., Tin House, Ploughshares, and numerous anthologies, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2007, Best American Essays 2000, and The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and the Yaddo Corporation. In 2010, he was the Master Artist at The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
July 17, 2024
Perhaps one of the finest collections of short stories written in the late twentieth century, certainly it is a 'classic' (and I almost never used that overworked cliche) and the second story in the collection, 'My Mother's Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame', has been anthologised in numerous gay and straight collections. That story, all the stories in this collection, should be and could be read, by anyone who has lived through or is living through the complexities of growing up in families that you love but are flawed and destroy as much as they create. Their setting is suburban in Maryland in the 1950's and, I must admit to having spent the years from kindergarten to fourth grade there in the mid-1960's, but I think even without that I would find resonance and truth in these stories.
They are inter-linked with subtlety, accumulating detail rather than describing events, creates a momentum that is as evocative of times past while relating, betrayal, loss and love. Achingly beautiful, it is a book I would never part from.
They are inter-linked with subtlety, accumulating detail rather than describing events, creates a momentum that is as evocative of times past while relating, betrayal, loss and love. Achingly beautiful, it is a book I would never part from.
October 22, 2007
What's not to learn from a master like Richard McCann? His prose is stunning, his stories glittery with tears of sadness, pathos and joy. A true writer's writer if ever there was one.
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January 15, 2026I cried through the end of this. standout stories were Eduardo’s Hair & The Diarist. his language is so precise it hurt, especially when he was describing desire and longing before he came out, and in eduardo’s hair.
July 22, 2011
In Mother of Sorrows Richard McCann establishes himself as a master of language. His prose alternates from simple and punchy to fancy and ostentatious. There is movement in the writing and the vibrant descriptions often explode into poetry. The lyricism of McCann’s sights and sounds push each sentence forward. He leaps across the boundaries of genre, clearing the hurdles of mixing styles with feet to spare.
He writes with authority. In “My Mother’s Clothes” there is a moment when the story becomes metafiction and the narrator addresses himself in parenthetical statements spanning the length of a page. Though this dramatic shift in voice is out of place--it's near the halfway point in the story and neither preceded nor followed by an explanation--somehow it feels natural.
Less than a quarter of the way through the collection I felt myself wanting to surrender to the narratives. I began to accept McCann’s willingness to bend the rules because he does it purposefully and in the interest of the reader. He steps around convention for the sake for the story, to tell it the way it is and not how it should be, to make it more engaging. It is the language, leaping off the page, which makes Mother of Sorrows feel like a conversation with the author rather than a group of written narratives. McCann threads these stories skillfully with tropes as small as mentions to Edith Piaf and themes as vast and reaching as aging, death and family.
Some of the endings are unfulfilled, specifically “Eduardo’s Hair,” which lacked a conclusion deserving of its poeticism. However, more often than not, McCann’s vignettes are ultimately satisfying. In “Snapshots of the Visible Man” we are given just that, snapshots, quick and vivid scenes of life. I read these pieces twice, the second time looking at the book as a whole, more like a novel than a linked story collection. The narrative voice brings it all together. The reader can follow these linear narratives as they tell an overarching story about a boy becoming a man. The narration develops with each page, adopting the tone that embodies the title character, Maria Delores, Mother of Sorrows, and her sense of nostalgia, drama and pageantry.
He writes with authority. In “My Mother’s Clothes” there is a moment when the story becomes metafiction and the narrator addresses himself in parenthetical statements spanning the length of a page. Though this dramatic shift in voice is out of place--it's near the halfway point in the story and neither preceded nor followed by an explanation--somehow it feels natural.
Less than a quarter of the way through the collection I felt myself wanting to surrender to the narratives. I began to accept McCann’s willingness to bend the rules because he does it purposefully and in the interest of the reader. He steps around convention for the sake for the story, to tell it the way it is and not how it should be, to make it more engaging. It is the language, leaping off the page, which makes Mother of Sorrows feel like a conversation with the author rather than a group of written narratives. McCann threads these stories skillfully with tropes as small as mentions to Edith Piaf and themes as vast and reaching as aging, death and family.
Some of the endings are unfulfilled, specifically “Eduardo’s Hair,” which lacked a conclusion deserving of its poeticism. However, more often than not, McCann’s vignettes are ultimately satisfying. In “Snapshots of the Visible Man” we are given just that, snapshots, quick and vivid scenes of life. I read these pieces twice, the second time looking at the book as a whole, more like a novel than a linked story collection. The narrative voice brings it all together. The reader can follow these linear narratives as they tell an overarching story about a boy becoming a man. The narration develops with each page, adopting the tone that embodies the title character, Maria Delores, Mother of Sorrows, and her sense of nostalgia, drama and pageantry.
July 15, 2024
I finished it and put it down and thought, did I dream this? It felt as though I might have. I know that man, I knew that man, didn't I? I picked it up again to reread the last page. It still felt like a memory.
If you've never read Mother of Sorrows, it's a must, though honestly, I feel like everyone who reads short fiction, and particularly readers who care about essential books on the shelves of gay literature, read this book 15 years ago, when it came out. It's so much more than a short story collection- it's short stories and memoir and novel entwined, something I can't find a word for, it's a life! Every turn of it memorable, beautifully written. I can’t imagine how I missed it for so long (as if to mark my late arrival, the second hand copy I bought online turned out to be inscribed by Richard McCann - he even noted it was at the Miami Book Fair). I'm the worst kind of sentimentalist: I touched his name, thought of the pen he held, thought of what it must have taken to put all that pain and loneliness on the page - and the black hilarity, his mother - God, you can see every zirconian, glamorous inch of her - the travels, all of it - well, it took 20 years, it took surviving the loss of family, friends and lovers, it took McCann's talent and voice. Mother of Sorrows is searing.
So I'm late to this party - wake - picnic. But I'm staying for all of it. Hell, I've already been there.
If you've never read Mother of Sorrows, it's a must, though honestly, I feel like everyone who reads short fiction, and particularly readers who care about essential books on the shelves of gay literature, read this book 15 years ago, when it came out. It's so much more than a short story collection- it's short stories and memoir and novel entwined, something I can't find a word for, it's a life! Every turn of it memorable, beautifully written. I can’t imagine how I missed it for so long (as if to mark my late arrival, the second hand copy I bought online turned out to be inscribed by Richard McCann - he even noted it was at the Miami Book Fair). I'm the worst kind of sentimentalist: I touched his name, thought of the pen he held, thought of what it must have taken to put all that pain and loneliness on the page - and the black hilarity, his mother - God, you can see every zirconian, glamorous inch of her - the travels, all of it - well, it took 20 years, it took surviving the loss of family, friends and lovers, it took McCann's talent and voice. Mother of Sorrows is searing.
So I'm late to this party - wake - picnic. But I'm staying for all of it. Hell, I've already been there.
April 27, 2012
I find short stories somewhat difficult because I am always longing for the things that happen between these short episodes of life. These stories mostly pertain to the effect this boy’s mother had on his life and his ability to accept his homosexuality. Another interesting point in this story is the relationship with his brother (also gay) who grew up very differently and had a good relationship with their father, who died when they were young. The ultimate lesson I read from these stories (or the ultimate irony rather) is that the brother who was more “manly” or well-adjusted as a child ended up dying from a drug overdose…whereas the more awkward of the two ended up rather well-adjusted to normal life.
An enjoyable enough read, but I wouldn’t highly recommend it..especially not to someone who doesn’t read often. Some of the stories are slow and difficult to push yourself through and overall I didn’t get a lot of pleasure out of reading it.
An enjoyable enough read, but I wouldn’t highly recommend it..especially not to someone who doesn’t read often. Some of the stories are slow and difficult to push yourself through and overall I didn’t get a lot of pleasure out of reading it.
May 2, 2009
This book has been sitting on my wishlist for a couple years, and had perfect ratings from Amazon reviewers. I think those perfect ratings may have set the bar for my expectations too high. I liked it, but it won't make it onto my top books list.
His stories are tragic, yet I felt removed from them. It had the feel of a memoir, but I wanted to feel the emotions a little more. I also would have liked it better if he had better shown how his brother in childhood was related to the same brother in adulthood--they seemed like two completely different people.
His stories are tragic, yet I felt removed from them. It had the feel of a memoir, but I wanted to feel the emotions a little more. I also would have liked it better if he had better shown how his brother in childhood was related to the same brother in adulthood--they seemed like two completely different people.
April 7, 2016
A beautifully paced, compassionate and very vulnerable book of memoir. McCann approaches the material memories of his boyhood and his mother's presence in it with sacramental care. This is the kind of book you don't ant to finish, the kind of book from whose pages you look up from to see your own world with fresh eyes.
January 12, 2019
Luminous, precise, and heartbreaking memoir (or is it a collection of interwoven stories?). I was lucky enough to study with Richard McCann and he is the realest of deals.
November 23, 2022
A GAY MAN’S BRUTALLY FRANK MEMORIAL
Richard McCann’s Mother of Sorrows consists of ten tightly connected, meticulously constructed, and beautifully written stories. McCann uses an unnamed narrator to tell these sad yet wonderful stories that powerfully portray a gay American man’s life from his boyhood in the 1950s to midlife.
From the first story, “Crepe de Chine,” in which the narrator wondrously evokes his childhood relationship with his mother, to the last one, “The Universe, Concealed,” in which the narrator, middle-aged and HIV-positive, wonders if there will be anyone left to tell his story, the narrator takes the reader on a journey through his life that is disarmingly candid and full of surprises. Ranging in length from four to almost forty pages, the stories are placed in a sequence that could not be altered without destroying the complex structure and unity that McCann has created. The stories jump back and forth in time. The following is not a criticism: The reader will have to get to the last page of the book to put all the pieces of the narrator’s life together—the pieces that he chooses to reveal.
In “Dream House,” “The Diarist,” and “My Mother’s Clothes,” the narrator describes family life in post-World War II suburbia, a world of picture windows, pole lamps, the welcome wagon, and Gunsmoke, where nothing, he says, is beautiful. These stories contain motifs and metaphors, such as cut glass, basements, and diaries, which are woven throughout the fabric of the book. The narrator’s mother tells him and his brother that in Spanish her name, Marie Dolores, means “Mother of Sorrows,” a role that she plays to the hilt. The narrator’s father is also unnamed. He almost falls into the stereotype of the absent father with the sissy son, but, of course, we are seeing him through the narrator’s eyes.
The narrator has problems coming to terms with being gay. When he and his friend Denny dress up in his mother’s clothes and get caught (“My Mother’s Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame”), he cruelly discards Denny because he is too much like himself. When a young man, he realizes that he sounds like a homosexual, although he says he hates them. He hesitates about fulfilling his sexual desires (“Some Threads through the Medina”); then he unexpectedly tells us about his seven-year relationship with a man who dies of AIDS (“Eduardo’s Hair”). I would have liked to know more about the narrator’s development from a closeted homosexual to a loving gay man who could form a long-term relationship.
Davis, the narrator’s brother, is only fifteen moths older. “My Brother in the Basement” is the penultimate, shocking, and tragic story of the narrator’s relationship with Davis. After finishing this story, I had to take a deep breath before going on to the last story.
In these stories, McCann gives the reader many unforgettable poetic and visual images. For instance, the narrator stands outside his mother’s bedroom window and tries to write her name with sparklers. As the first letters drift away before he can finish the last letter, he draws a circle around what remains of her name to try to hold it in place.
Why is the narrator unnamed? I cannot satisfactorily answer this question. Is the unnamed narrator supposed to be “Every[gay]man”? I’m sure many gay men will read these stories and think, “This is my life, too.” Richard McCann’s unnamed narrator presents a brutally frank memorial to his parents, his brother, his lovers—and to himself. Mother of Sorrows is a masterpiece of literature about the gay male experience.
Richard McCann’s Mother of Sorrows consists of ten tightly connected, meticulously constructed, and beautifully written stories. McCann uses an unnamed narrator to tell these sad yet wonderful stories that powerfully portray a gay American man’s life from his boyhood in the 1950s to midlife.
From the first story, “Crepe de Chine,” in which the narrator wondrously evokes his childhood relationship with his mother, to the last one, “The Universe, Concealed,” in which the narrator, middle-aged and HIV-positive, wonders if there will be anyone left to tell his story, the narrator takes the reader on a journey through his life that is disarmingly candid and full of surprises. Ranging in length from four to almost forty pages, the stories are placed in a sequence that could not be altered without destroying the complex structure and unity that McCann has created. The stories jump back and forth in time. The following is not a criticism: The reader will have to get to the last page of the book to put all the pieces of the narrator’s life together—the pieces that he chooses to reveal.
In “Dream House,” “The Diarist,” and “My Mother’s Clothes,” the narrator describes family life in post-World War II suburbia, a world of picture windows, pole lamps, the welcome wagon, and Gunsmoke, where nothing, he says, is beautiful. These stories contain motifs and metaphors, such as cut glass, basements, and diaries, which are woven throughout the fabric of the book. The narrator’s mother tells him and his brother that in Spanish her name, Marie Dolores, means “Mother of Sorrows,” a role that she plays to the hilt. The narrator’s father is also unnamed. He almost falls into the stereotype of the absent father with the sissy son, but, of course, we are seeing him through the narrator’s eyes.
The narrator has problems coming to terms with being gay. When he and his friend Denny dress up in his mother’s clothes and get caught (“My Mother’s Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame”), he cruelly discards Denny because he is too much like himself. When a young man, he realizes that he sounds like a homosexual, although he says he hates them. He hesitates about fulfilling his sexual desires (“Some Threads through the Medina”); then he unexpectedly tells us about his seven-year relationship with a man who dies of AIDS (“Eduardo’s Hair”). I would have liked to know more about the narrator’s development from a closeted homosexual to a loving gay man who could form a long-term relationship.
Davis, the narrator’s brother, is only fifteen moths older. “My Brother in the Basement” is the penultimate, shocking, and tragic story of the narrator’s relationship with Davis. After finishing this story, I had to take a deep breath before going on to the last story.
In these stories, McCann gives the reader many unforgettable poetic and visual images. For instance, the narrator stands outside his mother’s bedroom window and tries to write her name with sparklers. As the first letters drift away before he can finish the last letter, he draws a circle around what remains of her name to try to hold it in place.
Why is the narrator unnamed? I cannot satisfactorily answer this question. Is the unnamed narrator supposed to be “Every[gay]man”? I’m sure many gay men will read these stories and think, “This is my life, too.” Richard McCann’s unnamed narrator presents a brutally frank memorial to his parents, his brother, his lovers—and to himself. Mother of Sorrows is a masterpiece of literature about the gay male experience.
June 24, 2022
Series of gay-themed episodes structured like a memoire.
McCann describes a young boy growing up in the '50s, frightened by his severe father but entranced by his glamorous, talkative, boozy mother. Around age 10, he joins a school friend in dressing up in his mother's clothing, trying to become her. In his later teens, he finds that his older brother is also gay, though he leads a less successful and, ultimately, tragic life. Reading this story of a gay young man struggling to find acceptance and a path in life, it is hard not to believe that there is not a strong autobiographical element (and, indeed, McCann had a brother, Davis, who predeceased him, just like the protagonist in Mother of Sorrows). Certainly, the episodes work only as a form of memoire (fictional or not); they do not have the internal structure of stand-alone short stories.
The writing is strong and evocative at times. However, the Publishers Weekly review is on the nose when it finds that "McCann's calm, elegiac prose is lovely in descriptive passages, but turns stiff and self-conscious in the frequent explanations the narrator offers for his behavior and that of others." The writing sometimes loses power when the direct observations of the ten year-old protagonist are intercut with the psycho-analytical interpretations of the adult narrator.
The coming-of-age story of the novel's gay protagonist is sad and rather bleak. There is a persistent undercurrent of anxiety and considerable self-loathing. Even as an adult, the protagonist has not obviously found joy or beauty in his life. While many parts of the book were published previously in compilations of gay fiction since the late-'80s, I find that McCann pales in comparison with the gorgeous prose of Edmund White.
McCann describes a young boy growing up in the '50s, frightened by his severe father but entranced by his glamorous, talkative, boozy mother. Around age 10, he joins a school friend in dressing up in his mother's clothing, trying to become her. In his later teens, he finds that his older brother is also gay, though he leads a less successful and, ultimately, tragic life. Reading this story of a gay young man struggling to find acceptance and a path in life, it is hard not to believe that there is not a strong autobiographical element (and, indeed, McCann had a brother, Davis, who predeceased him, just like the protagonist in Mother of Sorrows). Certainly, the episodes work only as a form of memoire (fictional or not); they do not have the internal structure of stand-alone short stories.
The writing is strong and evocative at times. However, the Publishers Weekly review is on the nose when it finds that "McCann's calm, elegiac prose is lovely in descriptive passages, but turns stiff and self-conscious in the frequent explanations the narrator offers for his behavior and that of others." The writing sometimes loses power when the direct observations of the ten year-old protagonist are intercut with the psycho-analytical interpretations of the adult narrator.
The coming-of-age story of the novel's gay protagonist is sad and rather bleak. There is a persistent undercurrent of anxiety and considerable self-loathing. Even as an adult, the protagonist has not obviously found joy or beauty in his life. While many parts of the book were published previously in compilations of gay fiction since the late-'80s, I find that McCann pales in comparison with the gorgeous prose of Edmund White.
September 3, 2018
This collection of 10 short stories presents a progression of snapshots of an unhappy, unfulfilled gay man, first depicted as a 9-year-old sissy boy cutting out paper dolls in a Washington suburb. The later stories follow him into his 20s and 30s, wandering Europe in a desperate quest for lasting love as he edges toward full-blown AIDS. As a boy, he is dominated by an artistic, emotionally needy mother slowly withdrawing from her family. The childhood stories struck me as too confined, almost claustrophobic, as the shy lad retreats into his mother's fantasies about New York glamour. At times, he tries to win his father's favor through manly gestures, such as digging nightcrawlers for a fishing trip. and doing target practice with an air rifle. But inevitably, the efforts backfire. The tale becomes more hopeful after the father dies young, and the boy, now an adolescent, grows closer to his seemingly macho older brother, Davis. But the fraternal bond, it turns out, is doomed to flame out, too.
Taken as a whole, the book is simply a melancholy story of the power of successive grief to overtake a life. For some of us, it doesn't get better.
Taken as a whole, the book is simply a melancholy story of the power of successive grief to overtake a life. For some of us, it doesn't get better.
January 25, 2019
McCann’s eloquence is the paramount reason to read this book. His prose is evocative and searing, elegant and precise. I especially appreciated the first half of the book in which he describes being a child drawn to beauty and the elegance his mother shared with him, but feeling shamefully out of place in that world. He longed for his father’s approval, but resisted being the person he thought his father could love. The losses he endures in his life are shattering, yet he survives by keeping himself at arm’s length from those he loves at the ends of their lives. McCann’s prose is cinematic. This will make an enduring movie.
March 31, 2023
7.5
Though it struggles at times, specially regarding the way it handles the childhood sessions, when it lands it lands. It's also a type of book that only makes sense/connects its dots after you finish it. It has a whole internal cycle to it that is really beautiful, but like all books of its kind: it ends leaving a lot hanging and I'd be lying if I said that type of stuff didn't get to me. Still, the writing is so strong (even at its weakest moments) and feels so biographical (to the point where I was unsure if I was reading a fiction or not) that it just carries you along if you allow yourself to it. Also, I felt like reading something other than Three Kingdoms, hehehe.
Favorite stories: "The Diarist", "My Brother in the Basement", "The Universe, Concealed"
Though it struggles at times, specially regarding the way it handles the childhood sessions, when it lands it lands. It's also a type of book that only makes sense/connects its dots after you finish it. It has a whole internal cycle to it that is really beautiful, but like all books of its kind: it ends leaving a lot hanging and I'd be lying if I said that type of stuff didn't get to me. Still, the writing is so strong (even at its weakest moments) and feels so biographical (to the point where I was unsure if I was reading a fiction or not) that it just carries you along if you allow yourself to it. Also, I felt like reading something other than Three Kingdoms, hehehe.
Favorite stories: "The Diarist", "My Brother in the Basement", "The Universe, Concealed"
February 22, 2021
McCann really brings the sad. I thought while reading about A Little Life, and how that book conveys suffering with lurid revelations of sexual slavery and self-harm. McCann doesn't need all that gimcrackery; he does it with just everyday alienation and untimely death. Or deaths, actually. Well, it's called Mother of Sorrows, so that should have been a hint right there.
April 19, 2019
The chapters that focused on the narrator’s relationship with his brother Davis were really great. The early chapters that dealt with the narrator’s childhood weren’t as powerful for me. McCann is a great writer and I look forward to reading more of his work.
October 25, 2022
Another book that I had to read for English class. I wish I could give it 0 stars. The writing was pretentious and idiotic and insensitive. The book was disgusting and plotless. If you can at all avoid this book please do.
September 5, 2017
Beautiful, in a remote way. It just didn't grab me though. There were parts I really enjoyed but it just got really slack for me about halfway through. Still happy I read it.
January 11, 2019
Some good scenes, but I ultimately didn't finish it after getting over halfway done with it. I'M SORRY OKAY?
July 30, 2021
Beautiful.
December 5, 2009
Richard McCann's "Mother of Sorrows" is a unique work of autobiographical fiction rich in emotion and illuminated by a painful, polished prose, breathtaking in its clarity.
In ten related stories a nameless narrator recounts episodes from his life that expose his often troubled relations with a brother cast in a role of family black sheep, a doomed father unable to recognize or nurture a gay son with a delicate nature, and an adored, self-absorbed mother of a thousand conflicting temperaments - "Our Mother of the Sighs and Heartaches," "Our Mother of the Mixed Messages," "Our Mother of Apology."
What is most impressive about this slim volume is the author's uncanny ability to cut instantly to the heart of the matter, to the emotional core of a given situation or memory without becoming verbose or maudlin. Not since Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" have we seen writing communicate so much, so succinctly.
In ten related stories a nameless narrator recounts episodes from his life that expose his often troubled relations with a brother cast in a role of family black sheep, a doomed father unable to recognize or nurture a gay son with a delicate nature, and an adored, self-absorbed mother of a thousand conflicting temperaments - "Our Mother of the Sighs and Heartaches," "Our Mother of the Mixed Messages," "Our Mother of Apology."
What is most impressive about this slim volume is the author's uncanny ability to cut instantly to the heart of the matter, to the emotional core of a given situation or memory without becoming verbose or maudlin. Not since Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" have we seen writing communicate so much, so succinctly.
October 5, 2008
I really liked this book, and some of the moments in this were just wonderful. There is such a pervasive sense of sadness, it made me pause. The only thing that bothered me about this book was it's disjointed nature: the first half seemed to build up to a portrait of family that was never finished, the second half brought in spirituality and the death of a host of characters that we never knew much about. I wanted the sections to weave together a little more than they did-- in non-fiction, we could excuse this since life doesn't fold itself into nice little boxes, but in fiction I want a little more.
August 10, 2015
I felt as though the author was trying to tell two different stories here. The vignettes set during the main character's childhood are poignant and beautifully written, and the stories set during his adulthood have an raw emotional brutality that's hard to forget. The problem arises from the fact that both of these settings appear in the same book without really interacting with each other. The themes from childhood don't seem to echo in adulthood, and it's often jarring to compare the characters as children and adults because we never see how they get from one to the other.
Well-written and memorable, but thematically disjointed.
Well-written and memorable, but thematically disjointed.
January 29, 2011
Come tanti altri, questo romanzo ha una vena pseudobiografica, che però tuttosommato non guasta. C'è tanto di vita vissuta in questo breve romanzo, che è una vera e propria cascata di ricordi e istantanee grigie ed eterne di vita.
I personaggi che si muovono sulla scena sono certamente personaggi vivi, densi, reali, forse anche troppo reali, spesso noiosi e irritanti, così tanto almeno da risultare decisamente veri.
In sostanza, è un buon romanzo, scritto bene, con sentimento e con astuzia e con classe, ma che non mi ha convinto più di tanto e che non mi ha coinvolto proprio.
Uno di quei romanzi che ti fanno pensare: è scritto bene, ma è proprio noioso. Peccato.
I personaggi che si muovono sulla scena sono certamente personaggi vivi, densi, reali, forse anche troppo reali, spesso noiosi e irritanti, così tanto almeno da risultare decisamente veri.
In sostanza, è un buon romanzo, scritto bene, con sentimento e con astuzia e con classe, ma che non mi ha convinto più di tanto e che non mi ha coinvolto proprio.
Uno di quei romanzi che ti fanno pensare: è scritto bene, ma è proprio noioso. Peccato.
September 20, 2009
A well written collection but I felt it sparse. The stories didn't seem like stories for the most part, except for "Brother in the Basement" which delved deep into the relationship between the narrator and his older brother. There were a bunch of scenes that tied together and brought up the consistent element of the narrator being too scared to disclose his sexuality and regretting the life he's lead in someways for his cowardice.
As a collection I felt it more like a novel that skips areas and ties the one "theme" together. Not a bad read though.
As a collection I felt it more like a novel that skips areas and ties the one "theme" together. Not a bad read though.
June 24, 2011
Beautifully written essays about childhood and a few about adulthood. McCann's memories of his mother hold the various times and places and themes together, as the title implies. As is common nowadays, the book is touted as simply a "memoir," but it's really a collection of short pieces, each of which stands by itself, and not a continuous narrative in any sense of the word. Even though I get discombobulated by these inaccurate descriptions of books, I enjoyed reading this one once I figured out what it was. McCann writes beautifully and evokes moments from his past with chilling vividness.
September 28, 2012
Ok so far but not too interesting and I'm about a third of the way through. Was thinking of stopping but hard for me to not finish a book.
Too much detail on mother's clothing and stuff. I guessed main character to be gay kind of early.
We will see if it gets better.
Got a little better near end. I don't like the writing style and the jumping in periods of time. The transitions were terrible. Not a favorite at all.
After reading the reviews I totally missed that these were individual short stories. No wonder I hated it!
Too much detail on mother's clothing and stuff. I guessed main character to be gay kind of early.
We will see if it gets better.
Got a little better near end. I don't like the writing style and the jumping in periods of time. The transitions were terrible. Not a favorite at all.
After reading the reviews I totally missed that these were individual short stories. No wonder I hated it!
January 7, 2008
This is one of the times I wish Goodreads offered a half-star option, because I've been teetering between three and four stars for this book. Overall, I liked the stories presented in this book quite a bit. McCann's writing is beautiful. It's detailed but easy to read and almost poetic. The book was a quick read and a good read. Some stories were truly captivating and emotional, others I felt were good--not great--hence the teetering between 3 and 4 stars.
September 16, 2016
This is a very sad book of related short stories. A story of one man's youth and the struggles he goes through to find and create a life of his own. Each story is related a bit to the others and you get the full picture of this family and their struggles with their grief, shame, sexuality, and anger. My favorite story was The Universe, Concealed. These stories are definitely not of the uplifting nature.
November 4, 2009
This is a collection of fiction short stories which reads like a coming of age memoir about a gay boy who grew up in the DC area in the 1950s. The stories are interconnected with the same narrator, and most of the stories are about his relationship with his mother, a colorful, self-absorbed storyteller/dramatist. The most powerful story is about his brother who dies of a heroin overdose.
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