This Side of Brightness
From the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:26th Feb '26
£9.99
This title is due to be published on 26th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
From the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
‘Vivid, potent, beautiful’ Maggie O’Farrell
At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the dark bowels of the riverbed, the workers – Black, white, Irish and Italian – dig together. But above ground, the men keep their distance – until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter’s day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.
Almost ninety years later, Treefrog stumbles on the same tunnels and sets about creating a home amongst the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and petty criminals that comprise the forgotten homeless community.
‘Riveting and devastating’ Observer
‘McCann writes with unusual truthfulness about poverty, degradation and love’ Daily Telegraph
‘Brilliant … A dramatic memorial to the working-men who built the greatest of modern cities’ Financial Times
It is, perhaps, the first authentic novel about homeless, about living below and beyond this rich city. He evokes so powerfully the stink of the present, the poignancy of the past * Frank McCourt *
Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description * Independent on Sunday *
A tour de-force social history of modern New York, exploring the labyrinthine netherworld of disused subway tunnels, from their creation by Irish migrant workers to their occupation by down-and-outs * Irish Independent *
Disturbingly beautiful ... A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak * New York Times Book Review *
A rarity in this cool era - the urban saga with a social conscience, employing the large canvas once used by Steinbeck and Algren * Washington Post *
It is partly a story of the men who dug and blasted New York’s tunnels and of the high-steel workers who turned horizontal astonishment upon its vertical end, balancing hundreds of teetery feet above the streets to subdue the swinging girders and bolt them together into skyscrapers. Told with gripping realism and subtle detail, the facts – history researched – glow like jewels * Los Angeles Times *
ISBN: 9781037204289
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages