A writer attempting to deal wioth trauma: McCann and Thirteen Ways of Seeing

All in book group agreed that Colum McCann's Thirteen Ways of Looking was a strong collection of (4) stories, including one long story. Kind disparate discussion as we all weighed in on each of the stories with a wide range of comments, quibbles, and commendations. It seems, oddly, that we talked the most about the 4th story, the one about the nun who was tormented by a captor in her youth and now, years later, learns that the man who tortured her is a respected world citizen and she goes to London to confront him. We all were glad she did so, though some of us - maybe me in particular - wish she hadn't just made it a personal resolution that she had outed the guy and told the world what a woman-hating criminal he was and maybe still is. As to the title story, we all seemed to agree that we admired the unusual time scheme - we learn early on that the central character gets murdered, the question is why and how - and the way McCann blended a close third-person account of an elderly man coping with his ailments and limitations and essentially a police procedural as several detectives scour videocam recordings for evidence. I noted that I didn't like the coincidence that the killer just happened to work in the very restaurant where is victim was having lunch - that it should have been a hired hit or an act of rage gone wrong; M disagreed and said that placing the killer in the restaurant and making his act impulsive rather than premeditated added to the story. Someone - RR? - believed that the central figure sounded too Irish and Joycean and not Jewish enough. Some discussion about Stevens's framing poem, and we agreed that the verses are not meant to tie directly to each of the sections of the story. Not much to say about the xmas story although some more than others liked the idea of a story about a writer struggling to write a story (I not among those). Much talk also about the story about the boy who nearly drowned - and the mystery of what exactly happened to him, which will remain unsolved. Much criticism of the mother for her poor judgment and even for her desire to live with this demanding child in a remote village rather than in a city or suburb where help would be at hand. Finally, we obviously discussed the relationship between the assault on McCann and these stories. I for one am skeptical of his claim that the title story was written before he was assaulted; in any event, it's clear that each of these stories represents a writer's attempt to deal with and overcome trauma, through his writing and through his characters, which in a way is what all writers do all that time, to varying degrees and w/ varying success.