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
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This Side of Brightness
Narrated by:
Dion Graham
Buy Now for £13.33
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Narrated by:
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Dion Graham
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By:
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Colum McCann
By the author of Let the Great World Spin, this critically acclaimed novel delves deep into the underbelly of New York
‘Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description' Maggie O'Farrell
‘A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak' New York Times Book Review
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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 bowels of the riverbed, the workers – black, white, Irish and Italian – dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. 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, a homeless man nicknamed 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.©1998 Colum McCann (P)2021 Penguin Random House LLC
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Critic reviews
'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'
‘Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description'
‘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'
‘A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak'
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