Rating: 
Summary: Among the finest I have ever read
Review: After reading this depth of history, this understanding of New York, and especially this dialogue, it is very difficult to believe that the author is not a native New Yorker, much less someone who moved here only a few years ago. The magnitude of his research shines through in this very compelling novel.
McCann also has a very strong voice, and a great deal to say with it. The depictions are vivid, and the denouement deeply satisfying. I recommend this book to everyone who asks me for a good read. I wish I could read it again for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Work
Review: Colum McCann has written a beautiful book with his work, "This Side of Brightness". Beautiful in this case may seem odd, but I would use the word here as I would use it to describe a work by John Steinbeck. Human nature and behavior often has trouble rising above decent much less beautiful, but a talented writer can bring painful lives and experiences to paper in prose that is wonderful to read. The pain that is documented is not minimized, rather written in a way that allows the truth to remain unvarnished, and the prose to be rendered by an artist like Mr. McCann.I have read about the men who dug the excavations for the caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge, but never for the hundreds of miles of tunnels throughout the boroughs of New York. Tunneling is an extremely dangerous occupation, and if possible is even more hazardous when tunneling under water. The men must work in highly pressurized rooms in order to keep the river from collapsing in upon them, and yet the pressure cannot be so great that the air violates the walls of the chamber blowing outward as opposed to being crushed. The book documents a true story of men that were literally pushed through the walls of the tunnel they were digging until ejected in to the river and then being blown out of the water. To live through such an experience has to rank with the most remarkable stories of survival. The book shares two lives that are revealed in parallel as far as narrative, but are intertwined in practice. The lives of both men are occupied at various times by living/working underground, but ultimately one life is spent and finally ends beneath the river, while for the other it is a refuge that ultimately allows him to emerge once again to life above ground leaving his demons buried. The author also explores prejudice in a variety of forms, and from the book's very beginning shows prejudice and racism for the absolute stupidity it is. Men of various color and ethnic backgrounds enter a vicious working environment where they not only work together but are willing to risk their lives for each other. Black, white, Irish, Italian, Polish, none of these characteristics have any meaning when below ground, once returned to the surface every vile behavior associated with race, and religion once again is in full blossom. Church leaders reinforce the worst and most ignorant tenets of institutional stupidity; de facto Jim Crow rules dehumanize its victims. Colum McCann does not shy away from any topic of traditional controversy. He takes the reader through generations of a family begun by a white wife and her black husband, their children who are born in to a world that hates them even more than their all black father, if that is possible. There is one issue I am unclear on and it stems from a quote on the jacket of the book. Frank McCourt writes of McCann's, "having been there", when he writes about homeless living under the city. My question is whether the author did live there for a time while writing this book, or whether he actually was homeless for a period of time. In either event it took courage to live there as an observer, and if the latter, both courage and a willingness to share a desperately difficult and personal part of his life.
Rating:
Summary: Most Recommended Book
Review: I LOVE THIS BOOK! I just had to get that out of the way. The story is intense and visceral. The characters are so well developed that you are completely drawn into their world, whichever world they are living in. I have recommended this book to several friends and they in turn have given it to their friends and so on and so forth. It's been an interesting experiment watching how this one book as affected so many different people I know and don't know. The story and language are engaging and appropriate. You don't have street people speaking in perfect, educated English. The imagery and rhythm of the language transport to exactly the place Colum McCann wants you to be. He is a skilled storyteller with the gift of a keen observational eye. Nothing gets past him. It was the details, the little things that I loved about this book. It truely is one of the best books I'll ever read and read and read again.
Rating:
Summary: Most Recommended Book
Review: I LOVE THIS BOOK! I just had to get that out of the way. The story is intense and visceral. The characters are so well developed that you are completely drawn into their world, whichever world they are living in. I have recommended this book to several friends and they in turn have given it to their friends and so on and so forth. It's been an interesting experiment watching how this one book as affected so many different people I know and don't know. The story and language are engaging and appropriate. You don't have street people speaking in perfect, educated English. The imagery and rhythm of the language transport to exactly the place Colum McCann wants you to be. He is a skilled storyteller with the gift of a keen observational eye. Nothing gets past him. It was the details, the little things that I loved about this book. It truely is one of the best books I'll ever read and read and read again.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not a "feel good" story
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book as I had thought it was about the lives of "sandhogs" who dug the tunnels under New York at the turn of the century. Had I rated this book after the first 40 or 50 pages, when this is exactly what the book was about, I might have given it 5 stars, as it was very well writen, and very interesting. Then, however, the book started to rapidly jump through time, from generation to generation, not allowing for full development of characters. The most interesting characters, 3 of the 4 main sandhogs, were really only part of the very beginning of the book, and then almost forgotten.
By the second half of the book, the digging of the tunnels was a distant memory, and the book became very dark, focusing on drugs and homelessness (not that these aren't interesting subjects). I just felt that towards the end there was too much misery, and not enough character development.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable achievement
Review: In this epic novel, Mr McCann combines both historical facts and fiction. On the historical side, the story opens with the digging of a railway tunnel under the East River in New York in 1916. The reader follows the main character, a coloured man called Nathan Walker, a sandhog who struggles daily with his shovel against the earth. The working conditions are atrocious: the heat, the noise, the dirt, the physical strain - the digging was done by manpower in these days. Later Nathan marries Eleanor O'Lear, a white woman of Irish descent. Such a marriage was considered by most New Yorkers as a disgrace at that time. They bring up two children, both a social and a financial challenge.
Parallel to Nathan Walker's story, the reader follows another character, a homeless man nicknamed Treefrog who made his home in one of the many disused tunnels in New York in the 1990s. At first there appears to be no connection between Nathan and Treefrog but soon enough the reader discovers how and why they are linked in the novel.
With a marvellous narrative for its economy, Mr McCann constructs a beautiful epic story of laughter and tragedy, of sadness and small victories. It is an authentic account about homelessness, about living below the rich and about the stronghold of the past.
Rating:
Summary: An original and rewarding novel
Review: Set both during the turn of the century and in the present day, The Side Of Brightness by Colum McCann is an original and rewarding novel of workers who undertook one of the most dangerous jobs in existence - that of the sandhog, someone who digs under the bowels of the riverbed to create the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The counterpoint of a homeless person living beneath the streets today complements this saga of those who risked (and often lost) their lives to advance transportation and technology in this complex and involving story of the building of New York City. Also very highly recommended are Colum McCann's previous works: (Everything In The Country Must (0312273185, ...) and Songdogs (0312147414, ...).
Rating:
Summary: I have NEVER read another book like this one!
Review: Somehow, coldly descriptive and vividly warm at the same read. These characters and this story has remained with me for months after reading "The Side of Brightness" and I am grateful to the friend who recommended it....
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, surprising magical read!
Review: This book was a rare find. My brother actually bought it and when I looked on the publishing page, I found it's a first edition. I do believe it will become a classic one day. Billed as a tale of the "homeless" I found it much more an adult type "Holes"--a magical story that weaves it's way through time, bringing us to a finale that's intertwined with the beginning. It's also a facinating look at the building of the train tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn and the men who toiled underground, now largely forgotten. I especially loved the way history repeated itself through time and space, making the tunnels themselves a character in the book.
You won't be disappointed if you read this great work.
Rating:
Summary: Genius
Review: This is a work of genius -- controlled and yet amazing to read. It's like Ondaatje and Berger together. Wonderful.
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