11 Jun / Apeirogon by Colum McCann [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
When Colum McCann first considered narrating his books, he offered to audition for his own National Book Awarded Let the Great World Spin: “… and guess what,” he revealed in an interview, “I didn’t get the part for my own book.” Thankfully, he persevered and Apeirogon is his third (and perhaps finest) self-narrated title.
Irish-born McCann’s lingering, soft Irish lift feels like a solemn, calming enhancement to his gorgeous, albeit violence-haunted, narrative. “Readers familiar with the political situation in Israel and Palestine will notice that the driving forces in the heart of this book, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, are real,” he opens. “By ‘real’ I mean that their stories – and those of their daughters Abir Aramin and Smadar Elhanan – have been well documented in film and print.”
That possible familiarity should not be a deterrent to immediately choosing this title: McCann has inventively transformed headlines into a literary “Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides,” featuring 1001 sections (a nod to the iconic One Thousand and One Nights, a leitmotif throughout) that count up from 1 to 500, with a binding interlude marked 1001, before counting back down from 500 to 1.
Without ever eliding the magnitude of loss and mourning, McCann creates a can’t-turn-away, elegiac homage to resilience and hope.
Review: “Media,” Booklist, May 15, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020