Fishing the Sloe-Black River

The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing poetry and peace found in the mundane: a memory, a scent on the wind, the grace in the curve of a street. Fishing the Sloe-Black River is a work of pure augury, of the channeling and re-spoken lives of people exposed to the beauty of the everyday.

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Reviews and Praise

“A gifted and determined stylist, Colum McCann seems to have taken a vow never to write a dull line.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Rich, powerful stories that place McCann at the front ranks of contemporary Irish writers.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Beautiful…These well-made stories, written with fierce beauty, are sure of their effect and power.” –The Washington Post Book World

“There is magic in this McCann, and he brings to each page a special sorcery with the voices he conjures….No one can read through and not emerge feeling changed, somehow ennobled by it.” –The Baltimore Sun