Songdogs

by Colum McCann

  Also by Colum McCann

  Fishing the Sloe Black River

  Acclaim for Songdogs by Colum McCann

  “A lyrical jewel … A graceful novel about the unbreachable gap between memory and reality, Songdogs promises a fine literary future for Colum McCann.”

  —Joy Press, The Baltimore Sun

  “A breathtaking first novel … Colum McCann does glorious things with words.”

  —Carol McCabe, The Providence Sunday Journal

  “Thoughtful, moving, and well-crafted … It is rare to read a novel in which the language is as distinctive and sustained, or the details as inventive and apt.”

  —Christian Wiman, Austin American-Statesman

  “Their entwined stories combine forcefully, with a free and reaching lyricism and a secure sense of craft, to provide a remarkable canvas of heartache and promise.”

  —Edward Conlon, Time Out, New York

  “Brimming with fluid, lyrical language … Already much-lauded in Ireland, New York-based McCann deserves equal attention stateside.”

  —Paper magazine

  “Powerful … mesmerizing … McCann links events by mood as much as by date, employing prose of a poetic logic and musical cadence that binds transitions of character, time, and place into a cogent melody and pattern.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  SONGDOGS. Copyright © 1995 by Colum McCann.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by St. Martin’s Press under license from Pan Books Limited.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCann, Colum

  Songdogs / by Colum McCann.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-14741-4

  1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 2. Ireland—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6063.C335S66 1996

  823'.914—dc20

  96-19572

  CIP

  First published in the United States of America by Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

  The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the help of the Irish Arts Council for a 1993 bursary to write this novel, and The Tyrone Guthrie Center in County Monaghan, Ireland, where part of this work was written.

  eISBN 9781466848665

  First eBook edition: May 2013