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Zoli

by Colum McCann (Goodreads Author)

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 1,295 ratings · 225 reviews

A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature.

Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather f...more

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published January 9th 2007 by Random House (first published September 1st 2001)

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Feb 20, 2013 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Michael by: richard

Shelves: fiction, music, world-war-2, coming-of-age, family-relationships, poetry, historical-fiction

I enjoyed this a lot for its window on Romany (“Gypsy”) culture in Slovakia from the 30’s to the 50’s and its portrait of the life of a fictional poet trying to put a voice to her people. “A” for the effort by an American author in trying to portray such a girl and woman from a first person perspective, but “B” for not quite succeeding in making her come alive for me. Maybe that’s inevitable for such an “alien” and closed off culture, so I still recommend the book for taking me the distance.

The...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Chrissie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bio, kirkus, slovakia, gypsies, austria, italy, sample-g, audio, hf, 2012challenge, hungary

While I read this book I grappled with my lack of understanding. This is a book of historical fiction; I could not make up my mind if I wanted to learn the details about the life of Romani poet Papsuza (1910-1987), on which this book is loosely based, or whether I should just read the book for the delight of falling into the story. Only when I stopped trying to learn the factual details and let myself just plain enjoy the story did I enjoy the book. In the process I did learn very much about the...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a daring idea...trace the life of a Roma poetess from early life under fascist rule in the dying democracy of Czechoslovakia to dying years in the utterly different but equally repressive "Free World" that doesn't like her unrepentant socialism...in her own voice.

McCann's up to the task. It's a very well-built book, and Zoli (a boy's name in her culture, given by her grandfather to help protect her) is a fully realized person. She lives an exciting life. She writes amazing poetry (so we're...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Cmorice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Il sent le poids qu'il porte sur lui : les deux bouteilles, le bloc-notes, les crayons, les cigarettes, le petit appareil photo et le minuscule magnétophone, planqués dans et sous ses vêtements. Il ajuste sa veste en arrivant au bout de la passerelle, saute au-dessus du dernier trou, atterrit dans la boue à vingt mètres d'une baraque. Il lève les yeux, respire un bon coup, mais ses veines vibrent comme des cordes de piano, le coeur tape dans sa poitrine, il n'aurait jamais dû venir seul. Journa...more

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Oct 09, 2010 Amberly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Only my second 'encounter' with Gypsies after the "pikey" Brad Pitt in Snatch, I was delighted by this thoroughly moving and incredibly interesting account of Zoli's life - full of anthropological detail and restrained emotion. Unusually-literate (for a female Gypsy), poet and singer, full of resolve, survives fascists and fame, escapes and uprisings, love lost, lucky breaks and travesty, she is misunderstood and used by both sides ... but the best part is it's loosely based on the life of a rea...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Cleo rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Colum McCann's writing. He has a great writing style, and he always chooses such interesting subjects, like in Let the Great World Spin. Zoli focuses on the Roma (gypsies) and one Roma woman in particular, Zoli. Zoli is a poet, a young woman who fled with her grandfather in 1930s Czechoslovakia to live with a clan of harpists. She later becomes a poet (and a symbol of tolerance, too) in the Soviet Union. Her gift for poetry is admired by the Roma (Gypsy) people and admired by a yo...more

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Aug 05, 2010 Zoë (In The Next Room) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“There is an old Romani song that says we share little pieces of our heart with people and the further we go along, the less we have for ourselves until there is not enough left to go round and that’s called travelling, and it’s also called death, and since it happens to us all there’s nothing more ordinary than that.”

Zoli is the third book I have read by Irish writer Colum McCann (following Everything In My Country Must and This Side of Brightness) and the one that made me finally understand w...more “There is an old Romani song that says we share little pieces of our heart with people and the further we go along, the less we have for ourselves until there is not enough left to go round and that’s called travelling, and it’s also called death, and since it happens to us all there’s nothing more ordinary than that.”

Zoli is the third book I have read by Irish writer Colum McCann (following Everything In My Country Must and This Side of Brightness) and the one that made me finally understand why McCann is a genius- Zoli is a truly incredible book. The difference between Zoli and the other two McCann books for me boils mostly down to the setting. McCann does a great job with setting, in Everything In My Country Must the setting is Ireland, and in This Side of Brightness it is New York, and in both situations it is incredibly realistic. Zoli takes place in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Italy, France... basically Zoli moves around a lot, which is not incredibly shocking for a book about a Romani. Although McCann does an expert job at crafting a realistic world for the book, Zoli is a book about the people, not the place which for me made it far more human.

Specifically, Zoli is the story of Marienka "Zoli" Novotna who is raised by her grandfather after her entire family is killed by the fascist Hlinka Guard in 1930s Czechoslovakia. Zoli is unique because her grandfather teaches her to read and write, something usually reserved only for the Romani elders. A young man originally from Britain called Stephen Swann discovers her talent for singing and along with helps to publish a chapbook of poems from songs she has invented, falling in love with her along the way. Initially the Gypsy people embrace Zoli's fame but as the ruling Communists turn her into a poster girl for their resettlement initiatives of the Gypsies, she is rejected from the only family she has ever known.

There are a few flaws in this novel. Firstly it begins with a flash-forward to a journalist looking for information about Zoli and being unable to find it, a section which does not contribute to the story and which I do not think was necessary. Also, the novel switches narrators throughout the story, with McCann using a first-person narrative when writing from the perspective of Swann, and a third person when writing about Zoli. When writing about Zoli McCann maintains a distinctly masculine voice, which is likely why he doesn't use the first person, but still felt slightly out of place when the focus of the novel is a female character.

Despite these flaws which prevent me from calling Zoli the-best-book-ever, I really did love and enjoy it. It's clear that McCann has matured as a writer since his earlier works, and while it contains the precise writing that I have always enjoyed, it was also an emotional story-telling of a complex and strong protagonist. In Zoli, McCann has crafted a memorable and human novel, evoking a world I could not have imagine before but which I was drawn into with expertise and which made me only want to read more. ****(less)

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Nov 06, 2010 Janel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I heard Colum McCann speak last month and I was fascinated with how he "immerses" himself within a book while writing it. He was speaking (and reading) on Let the Great World Spin, but at times he would refer to his other books as well. While I have read books set around both World Wars, I have never read a book set in Czechoslovakia or about gypsies. Colum writes the book from Zoli's perspective as told to her adult daughter. He also writes a few sections from Stephen's point of view and an unn...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, library, mystery

I hadn't expected an artsy book with shifting perspectives and sentences that didn't always make sense. Nor was I expecting to learn about the advent of Communism in the Slavic region. I was hoping for a reasonably fair and accurate portrayal of one Romani woman. I'm satisfied with what I ended up reading, though.

The book spans over 70 years, following the life of a fictional Romani woman around what was then Czechoslovakia, based loosely on another poet of that time. She's witness to many terri...more

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Feb 09, 2010 Charlaralotte rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

Continuing on my McCann kick. Found this book an excellent foray into portraying the lives of Slovakian Romani people before, during, and after WWII. Harrowing images of persecution, destruction, and the fickleness of post-war Communism. Loved the main character of Zoli. McCann's writing gave an excellent sense of what her life was like at every stage, and how her fame as a singer was manipulated by the state. Watching her cast first as a great heroine of her people and then as a great betrayer...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Stafford Davis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I first heard of Zoli and its author Colum McCann on Bookworm, a weekly podcast that I religiously listen to. I was convinced early into the half hour show that I needed to read this book partly because of my long fascination with all things Eastern European and partly for the insight that McCann expounded upon host Michael Sliverblatt’s always unique questions. The Irish author gives an original take on the Roma and a not too far flung connection I sense is the common history of persecution bet...more I first heard of Zoli and its author Colum McCann on Bookworm, a weekly podcast that I religiously listen to. I was convinced early into the half hour show that I needed to read this book partly because of my long fascination with all things Eastern European and partly for the insight that McCann expounded upon host Michael Sliverblatt’s always unique questions. The Irish author gives an original take on the Roma and a not too far flung connection I sense is the common history of persecution between the Irish by the English and later Americans, and the not so subtle discrimination of the Roma by most of central and eastern Europe. Add to this McCann’s talents with prose and the loose fictionalization of Bronisława Wajs, a Polish Romani woman known as Papusza in her culture, and one has the novel Zoli.

The book starts in 1930’s Czechoslovakia with the childhood of Marienka “Zoli” Novotna and her Grandfather witnessing the deaths of their gypsy family by the fascist Hlinka Guard. McCann brings us into the post WW1 years of Eastern Europe where political chaos and instability are rampant. The Roma live on the outskirts of the societies they orbit by constantly traveling in close communities that share a culture that extends beyond national boundaries and tongues of the land. Gypsies are known as thieves and tricksters that live on the backs of hard working people, wandering the shadows with little of their own and nothing to offer contemporary life. While rival governments like socialists and fascists wrestle for power, the Roma keep to themselves and away from the centers of power that equally threaten their existence. And so a six year old girl and her grandfather watch in hiding as their kumpania (clan or extended tripe) including horses and wagons are forced onto an iced lake and soldiers set fire to the brush around the shore. The ice starts to crack, then break and the reader stands with the old man and girl watching a history and culture drown.

So begins the life of Zoli. Through this early lens she will become a prominent Romani woman that’s over flowing with talent as a singer and poet, and later as a kind of underground cultural icon inhabiting the imaginations of all kinds in post Soviet Europe.

Stephen Swan, a young journalist character of English and Slovakian descent that is a champion, lover, admirer, and unbeknownst exploiter of Zoli, soliloquizes;

"There are those of us who haven’t yet told our stories, or refuse to tell them, and so we become them: we hide away inside the memory until we can no longer stand the shell or the shock – perhaps that’s me, or perhaps I must tell it before it’s forgotten or becomes, like everything else, something else."

Colum McCann brings together a European history of diversity and atrocity while giving his characters personalities that reflect both. In a story that spans her birth to death, Zoli is filled with love and drive but is constrained by the times she inhabits be it the war years or the cold war years spent in seclusion, and even the new found freedom of modern Slovakia. McCann’s Zoli is an image of repression bearing the lost gifts of humanity’s darkest days.

As a child Zoli’s grandfather gives her books and teaches her to read which is taboo in the Romani culture of the day. It’s a verbal, extremely insular culture that frowns upon education from the outside. Until the second half of the 20th century gypsy heritage and history have largely been past down by word of mouth and in so doing, inadvertently helped to perpetuate some of the urban myths of the Roma that are so often used against them. Zoli’s grandfather notices this and secretly teaches his daughter to be literate in the hopes of preserving their culture. All the while Zoli flourishes in the Romani traditions of music, and later as a singer commands local crowds of Roma eventually being noticed by intellectuals that subsequently translate her songs into books of poetry and finally the post WWII communist government of Czechoslovakia. The new government wants to bring the Roma out of the forest and into the cities by simultaneously embracing and assimilating them into modern society. Zoli is the heart and tool of this movement and ultimately becomes a kind of gypsy martyr that falls from the graces of her people and is eventually exiled from the traditions she cherishes to live a life of poverty on the run from the law and her people.

"There is an old Romani song that says we share little pieces of our hearts with people and the further we go along, the less we have for ourselves until there is not enough left to go around and that’s called traveling, and it’s also called death, and since it happens to us all there’s nothing more ordinary than that."

Zoli becomes a ghost that ironically lives the true gypsy life. She comes close to death many times as she escapes angry locals, experiences sickness and starvation, gun wielding soldiers, and the intense cold of Eastern Europe. The lens she sees through becomes tarnished by her trust in no one. McCann shows all of her through the lives of many, making stylistic shifts in his writing that confuse and intrigue the reader while guiding us through the breadth of 20th and early 21st century Europe. And finally we are left at the end with a clandestine allegory that makes this novel spectacular.(less)

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Nov 02, 2011 Katie Van Domelen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: goodfiction

Think Colum McCann is going to become a go-to author for me. I picked this book up after reading Let the Great World Spin and was pleasantly surprised. Most times when I pick up a second book after an impressive first I pick up on patterns - things the author does every time, themes they continue to use, plot devices they rely on too much. Not so with McCann. This book could have been written by an entirely different person save that the quality was as high as the first.

On to the book itself: I'...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: irish

Colum McCann, a very gifted writer, must have sought out or stumbled upon the story of a Romani (Gypsy) woman who, against convention, learns to read and write and sings her own poems to wide acclaim. McCann turns this into a novel, good enough despite the feel that it came from library research; such is his talent.

A book will be more than worth the effort, however, if the author: a) makes you think about or see a thing in a way you never saw it before; and b) says something so profound, clever...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed, law-policy-and-justice, relationships

Kind of a disappointment after reading Let the Great World Spin, which I loved, but not a bad book in its own right. The author uses the same technique of switching from perspective to perspective, including switches from first- to third-person within the same perspective, which is kind of cool. At the same time, the pacing of the book felt awkward, particularly the section narrated from Swann's perspective - it just moved way too fast. Perhaps the author intended this effect, but it felt jarrin...more

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Nov 21, 2011 Martina Keller rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone with an interest in Eastern Europe

I loved this book. I started reading it on the airplane journey home from Vienna after a long weekend (and a previous novel by Josef Roth) immersed in the Hapsburg empire. It felt very appropriate. The book creates a rich atmosphere of the nomadic lifestyle of gypsies during and after World War II in the areas of what once was the Austro-Hungarian empire. The book also takes place in part during the transition years of communism in what is today Slovakia. I learned much about the Romani lifestyl...more

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May 07, 2011 Kalen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

Colum McCann is a magician with words and while I didn't like Zoli as much as I liked Dancer and Let the Great World Spin, I still found myself mesmerized by Zoli and her world. The research that must have gone in to this for an Irishman to recreate the world of a Gypsy in eastern Europe during the middle part of the last century is incomprehensible to me.

The book bogged down a bit somewhere in the middle, but the last quarter or so was so strong. I've got two more novels of his left to read be...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Zoli, Colum McCann's fourth novel, astounded critics with its sheer range of vision. While painting detailed strokes of the political tumult of the mid- to late-20th century, from the Nazis to the Communists to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zoli also personalizes the plights of individuals through different narrators, including an elderly Zoli. Vivid details, a gripping story, and fine prose complement this rare glimpse into an exiled culture. Only the New York Times critic described the characte

...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Neil Crossan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Neil by: SF Book Club

The book's opening section with Zoli telling her story is the best part of the book. When the story leaves Zoli to cover the English dude it brings the story to a halt. He's fictionally undesirable. The book tries to recover by going back to Zoli, but something is lost. There are some terrific scenes which bring Zoli to life, like her encounter with a mute farmer and his mother. These scenes are strung together enough to keep the book interesting. The final scenes are unnecessary and I'd feel mo...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Florence rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book had my full attention from first page until the last. Koli, a Roma woman has experienced tragedy early in her life when her entire family was murdered by Slovakia's fascist police in the 1930s. But it was my good fortune to pick up this novel and follow her life through the years. Koli, a fictional character, is a literate gypsy, quite unusual for the times. She was also a poet who had an uncanny ability to translate her people's history into song and verse. She paid a heavy price for...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: can-live-without-it

Colum McCann is a great writer. This is the second novel of his that I have read. My wonderfully smart, insightful friend Melissa brought him to my attention through our book group. The first novel I read of his was 'Let the Great World Spin' which was told in a series of intertwined vignettes set around the moment when Phillipe Petit walked the Twin Towers in 1974. Its title is taken from the venerable Lord Tennyson's Locksley Hall. That novel was extraordinary. This one, despite McCann's incre...more Colum McCann is a great writer. This is the second novel of his that I have read. My wonderfully smart, insightful friend Melissa brought him to my attention through our book group. The first novel I read of his was 'Let the Great World Spin' which was told in a series of intertwined vignettes set around the moment when Phillipe Petit walked the Twin Towers in 1974. Its title is taken from the venerable Lord Tennyson's Locksley Hall. That novel was extraordinary. This one, despite McCann's incredible skill, just didn't evoke the same kind of response and misses some ethereal mark.

Zoli is the fictionalized story of a Slovak Romany poet named Marienka Novotna and the spread of fascism across Europe in the 1930s. It is also the story, to a lesser extent, of Stephen Swann a doubled outcast from Dublin born to a Slavic father. In search of the promise of Engels and Marx, of Gramsci and the seemingly progressive Left he goes back to Bratislava. I won't labor the story, so here are some random thoughts about it.

The poem, attributed to Zoli, and influenced, the author says (332) by the work of Papusza and other Romany poets is lyrical to an extent, but there was no underpinning, nothing to ground it, the traditions were still kept indeliberately hazy even at that point in the novel so I could not find its meaning or understand any nuance.

What was good about the novel? McCann's mastery of the subtle detail--he was able to match, for example, the lyricism present in Romany culture and the absolute futility in the Communist enterprise as Swann experiences it. I liked that very much. The Communist promise of the Left of housing, integrity, and value as a person that Zoli and Swann were seduced by is devoid of any kind of honor of the individual. It HAS to be that way. It destroys the very thing that makes us individual and celebratory and reduces it all into gray, bankless homogeneity.

Because I only vaguely knew the stereotypes of Romany culture, in the form of the ugly moniker of "gypsy" and also knew that these were a people utterly persecuted and fell to death in WWII camps I was glad to get some sense of their history. Present day representations have largely been taken by TLC with "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding," where I watched, shocked, as young girls were pledged to marry early, leave school, clean and live in small trailers..... Are these young people even aware of their history?

The novel falls short because it is largely pieced together from research and even though McCann traveled to see current culture himself (this may be where the narrative of the journalist visiting the Romany comes into play), it is disjointed. I can see Zoli's passion, but I cannot understand it. The narratives do not weave into each other seamlessly, in fact, the stitches are broken and clearly visible. I feel sympathy for her as she is shunned and for Swann in his shame, feel badly for her running to the camp where she receives medical care, but this is the empathy I have with every kind of unfair condition where a human is regarded as less than human even by her own tribe.

I am left with a lot of questions: Why did she feel compelled to defy cultural norms by writing poetry in the first place? Why does she feel at home in Italy with Enrico? Why if she can so easily forgive so much, she cannot see her own failings in Swann's? Is taking his possession, his father's watch and selling it justified? And, finally, why end on such a ridiculous note of her finding her voice again with a band of Scottish players in her daughter's Paris flat? And a big one, how does such a culture survive, largely one of oral traditions, when their very constitution forces them to live as cultural outsiders? If one of their own writes of them, then they have betrayed the culture--is this why McCann treads so carefully?

(Sorry if this is too jumbled to follow, that's the mindset that I'm left with after reading.)

I like McCann very much, but this is a book that fell too short of its mark. I hope someone else takes up the cause because it would be awful for the culture to be reduced to the hands of reality television. I took away a keeper of a line though, "Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it's still impossible to land exactly where we took off" (66) That's an observation worth something. (less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Yvonne rated it 5 of 5 stars

What an amazing read! Not easy, but beautiful, inspiring, and moving...."It strikes her as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether." Zoli is a Romani woman living in Czechoslovakia in the 1930's through the 60's as fascism spreads. She lives in gypsy tradition and expresses herself through songs which the Communists use as a model of their new world of "tolerance." McCann's beautiful choice of words, lyrical cadence,...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Baljit rated it 2 of 5 stars

Interesting tale about life of Zoli, a Romani girl. The Romanis or Gypsies originated from the plains of Eastern Europe and lived a nomadic life of the land, trading thier wares and taking thier music and poetry with them. Their carefree lifestyle was at odds with the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe and they were persecuted. Zoli was a poet-singer who was persuaded by an English jounalist to record her work for publication. This brought her fame initially, but later she was accused of betray...more

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May 19, 2013 Perez Malone rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own

"It struck me that the world is as varied in goodness as it is in evil..." the sometimes narrator of Zoli remarks as her long journey nears its end. Zoli is a displaced person from the beginning of this novel and continues to be one throughout. Her group of Roma die early on, before we even meet them, at the hands of fascists. She and her grandfather must join another group and spend WWII being harassed by the authorities. They are forced to register as musicians and bury their harps in the grou...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: concierge, library, strong-women, poetry, 20th-century

2.5**

This novel is loosely based on the life of the Gypsy poet Papusza. Traveling across Europe – from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, Austria, Italy and France – the book focuses on Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the Romani tradition. As fascism spreads over 1930s Eastern Europe, the orphaned Zoli and her grandfather flee their home and join a clan of traveling Romani harpists. Despite the potential censure of the traditional clan members, Zoli’s grandfather teachers her to read. Her curiosit...more

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May 14, 2012 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

McCann, a novelist so good that both Ireland and America claim him as their own, is the author most recently of Let the Great World Spin. Zoli is McCann’s sixth work of fiction and the one that immediately preceded Let the Great World Spin. What the two novels have in common, as does This Side of Brightness, McCann’s second novel, which are the three I’ve read so far, are an historical setting, a collage of narrative voices, a recurring theme of multi-cultural migrant peoples, and a strong sense...more McCann, a novelist so good that both Ireland and America claim him as their own, is the author most recently of Let the Great World Spin. Zoli is McCann’s sixth work of fiction and the one that immediately preceded Let the Great World Spin. What the two novels have in common, as does This Side of Brightness, McCann’s second novel, which are the three I’ve read so far, are an historical setting, a collage of narrative voices, a recurring theme of multi-cultural migrant peoples, and a strong sense of compassion in the face of life’s hardships and dangers.

Zoli Novotna, the novel’s main character, is loosely based on the Romani poet and singer known as “Papusza” (Bronislawa Wajs, 1908-1987). Papusza was a Polish Gypsy; Zoli is a Slovakian Gypsy. Despite that difference in nationalities: both the fictional and source figures embraced and defied Gypsy traditions, both were writers and singers, both survived the Nazis and the Communists, the latter of whom first celebrated and then tried to compel conformity to the Soviet-citizen ideal, and both real and imagined heroines were viewed with suspicion internally because of their being promoted by literary and political figures in the outside world. McCann is an inspired researcher; he reportedly knew little or nothing about Romani culture when he began working on the book. He read, he interviewed, he traveled and observed and he convincingly constructs (to someone as blank a slate as the author was off the start) a unique insular world as it intersects and is overwhelmed by a larger one. His zealous research carries him and the reader a long way but perhaps not all the way it needs to.

The story, though, is compelling on a personal (Zoli) and ethnic level. In the end the larger world with its international politics and near universal social values and its own cultural and ethnic prejudices refuses the Gypsies any escape. Nazi racism, Soviet social control, and the societal norms of modern Europe all have little tolerance for a way of life that resists a national adjective on a culture whose tradition is timeless and transcends conventions like national borders. Granted these forces of compulsion are different in their intent and imposition—Nazi concentration camps versus insistent social service agencies—but all are unwilling to allow Gypsy traditions to continue unchanged. McCann’s novel captures this larger tragedy while focusing on Zoli’s life.

The novel spans a period from the 1930s into the early 2000s, jump cutting between its past and present, shifting narrators between first person (Zoli and Stephen Swann, an Irish-Anglo of Slovakian origin who moves to Czechoslovakia for political reasons and falls in love with Zoli) and third person. We begin with a young Zoli traveling with her grandfather and end with the widowed Zoli visiting her daughter in Paris in 2003, encountering at a conference celebrating Romani culture her former lover and the recognition that this once mobile and restless wanderer and performer had for some decades become rooted and is now satisfied with anonymity. It’s a well-crafted and thoughtful novel and one that works better at capturing the universals of the human condition than representing a deep investigation of what is unique and entrenched in the world of Gypsies. There is sufficient and convincing detail to tell the tale, not to make a culture come fully to life. McCann’s gift however is the way he invests his readers in the universal elements of his characters. How they strive and struggle for meaning, success, comfort, identity, notice and how despite the turmoil and loss there is dignity and hope, compassion and resilience.(less)

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Oct 31, 2011 Suzy rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Nick, Meagan and Jim, because they are all Czech.

I loved this book. Colum McCann is a very good writer. I think partly what I mean by that is that his writing evokes feelings, without being schmaltzy. Zoli is a book about how the best of intentions can go awry. It's about tremendous suffering and how stultifying blame and self-protection can be (or maybe that's just something I got from it). It's also about survival. Finally, it is an interesting study of what can happen to a "rescued" underclass. I liked the book too, because along the way I...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

Colum McCann finds the world to be a dark, seedy place where nothing good can last. At least, that's what I think he feels after reading or trying to read two of his books. Last year I read Let the Great World Spin, as a part of my effort to read more male authors, and more literary fiction. Reading that review now, I can see that my feelings on McCann's writing are very similar now, having tried unsuccessfully to read his novel Zoli.

Here is what Amazon has to say about the plot of Zoli,

A uniqu...more Colum McCann finds the world to be a dark, seedy place where nothing good can last. At least, that's what I think he feels after reading or trying to read two of his books. Last year I read Let the Great World Spin, as a part of my effort to read more male authors, and more literary fiction. Reading that review now, I can see that my feelings on McCann's writing are very similar now, having tried unsuccessfully to read his novel Zoli.

Here is what Amazon has to say about the plot of Zoli,

A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature.
Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened by the world of books, which is often frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the poster girl for a brave new world. As she shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced by the Gypsy people and savored by a young English expatriate, Stephen Swann.
But Zoli soon finds that when she falls she cannot fall halfway–neither in love nor in politics. While Zoli’s fame and poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own favor. Cast out from her family, Zoli abandons her past to journey to the West, in a novel that spans the 20th century and travels the breadth of Europe.

Sounds like a sweeping tale of love and transcendence, doesn't it? Instead, reading it felt like being sunk into a dark, bleak world where even the most beautiful, innocent things were tainted by something cold and dreary. At first I was drawn into the world of the Roma in eastern Europe during the early 20th century. I knew that they had been persecuted, but I didn't know a lot about their traditions or culture. But eventually I began to feel weighted down with all of the misery of the place. I suppose that was probably purposeful on McCann's part. After all, the Roma were persecuted, and we are talking about the start of the Soviet Union and the cruel grip of communism here. But nothing, and I mean nothing, that I read seemed to speak to the transcendence of the human spirit. Even the love story was bleak, and felt strangely unemotional. It is not that I am adverse to reading melancholy, haunting, tragic books. I read and loved The Road, and found the triumph of the father's love despite the complete destruction of the world to be meaningful, even if the events of the novel themselves were bleak. A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of my favorite books, and it is undoubtedly tragic and heart-wrenching. But even within the horror of living as a widow or a battered wife in Taliban Afghanistan, there were moments of tenderness, or beauty, or light. Not so with McCann's books.

Maybe I am being slightly unfair, since I didn't finish the book. Maybe the page after I finally gave up started a trend showing something, anything positive in the human experience. Sadly, I couldn't take the unending dreariness long enough to find out.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Sep 03, 2011 Jaron rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Two and a half stars.

There are certainly a lot of good things to be said about this book: It's a National Book Award Winner. It's well written, with short, eloquent sentences that were clearly labored over. It's about subject matter -- a wandering, persecuted gypsy poet -- that not a lot of books have mined.

My main problem was that I did not find the story interesting or compelling at all. I was not, at any point, curious about how the story would end, or about what would happen next. I found th...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 17, 2012 Kristin added it

Perhaps one day I'll finish this book--if I somehow stop having access to other books, am holed up in my house, and have an ample supply of happiness and comfort to get me through the last tiny bit I have left. I'm perhaps one chapter from the end, but the thing got so unimaginably depressing in the last half that I think I'm finally making the decision to call it quits. Reading it has become like slogging through a field with no foliage except densely packed stinging nettles. It's painful and t...more

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Apr 13, 2011 Tiffany rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, international-fiction

Colum McCann, you can apparently do no wrong in my eyes. I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. But you know, in a non-stalker kind of way. Sort of. Ha ha.

Zoli is my third McCann novel, and I have yet to encounter anything that resembles even a small chink in his writing. The guy is smooth. I often catch myself emitting tiny sounds when I read a McCann novel, either a sigh or a gasp or a grunt of affirmation. Something about the way he writes tickles my brain, and I'm always stunned at his astute observations a...more Colum McCann, you can apparently do no wrong in my eyes. I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. But you know, in a non-stalker kind of way. Sort of. Ha ha.

Zoli is my third McCann novel, and I have yet to encounter anything that resembles even a small chink in his writing. The guy is smooth. I often catch myself emitting tiny sounds when I read a McCann novel, either a sigh or a gasp or a grunt of affirmation. Something about the way he writes tickles my brain, and I'm always stunned at his astute observations about life and the human condition. I'm also astounded at the ease with which McCann slips in and out of several voices in one book, as it's a characteristic of his writing to present one event from numerous points of view.

McCann often bases his stories on true events, or at least uses a real story as a thematic device throughout his narratives. Let the Great World Spin, for instance, uses the true story of Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk across the World Trade Center towers as a metaphor for shrinking life down to its smallest element. Dancer is based on the true story of Rudolf Nureyev, the Russian dancer who died of AIDS in 1993. Zoli takes from the life of the Polish-Romani poet Papusza, who was ultimately banished from her community for the role her poetry played in "The Great Halt" of 1950 wherein all Romani people were forced to settle in one place rather than continue their nomadic traditions.

Zoli's story takes on a life of its own, however, when she is discovered by the Marxist activist and poet Stransky, who recruits the young British scholar Stephen to oversee the development of the young poet. Zoli and Stephen fall in love over the years, even though their relationship is forbidden by Romani law and therefore must be kept secret. What unfolds thereafter is a truly engaging story about love and betrayal, and the things people are forced to do when they are threatened. Every time I read a McCann, I'm faced with the consequences of my actions as a human being--this was especially demonstrated in Zoli, in which the characters' choices heavily influence the trajectory of their lives in either positive or negative ways. And the outcome is wonderfully unexpected, becoming bigger than I thought the story could be.

What I love about McCann is his ability to highlight life's grey areas, in addition to his refusal to slot people into "good" and "evil" categories. Zoli may have thought Stephen to be a horrible person for the way he betrayed her, but we as readers are made privy to his grief and the pressure he endured that forced him to turn his back on the one he loved most. McCann's characters are deeply human, able to commit both acts of great generosity and shameful cowardice. None of his characters are malicious, and I think that's why they're all still so endearing in their flaws.

Zoli was my least favourite McCann, but that just means I thought Let the Great World Spin and Dancer were just a tiny bit more compelling. I experienced a bit of a lull when Zoli was first cast out of her caravan after The Great Halt, which left her wandering around in the outskirts of town like a lost puppy. But once she made up her mind about where she was going, I was all for her again. And I loved where she ended up, and the strength she mustered in order to get there.

Three for three, McCann. You rock my world!(less)

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About Colum McCann

Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels, including "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and “Zoli,” all of which were international best-sellers. His newest novel “Let the Great World Spin” will come out in 2009. His fiction has been published in 26 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has wri...more Colum McCann is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels, including "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and “Zoli,” all of which were international best-sellers. His newest novel “Let the Great World Spin” will come out in 2009. His fiction has been published in 26 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent.

In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year." Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for Irish Literature.

His short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005.

Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian.

Colum teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Nathan Englander.

Colum has completed his new novel, "Let the Great World Spin." It is scheduled for release in the U.S on June 23 rd, 2009. An extract was published in the Paris Review in fall 2008. The British and Irish release will be in August, while European publishers will quickly follow up – in what amounts to an unprecedented international publication – in September 2009.

The novel begins in August 1974 as a tightrope walker makes his way through the dawn light across the World Trade Center towers, stunning thousands of watchers below. Using the true story of Philippe Petit as a pull-through metaphor, McCann crafts a portrait of the city and a people. There’s Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, who struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn the sons who died in Vietnam – they soon discover how much divides them even in their grief. Further uptown, Tillie, a 38-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter, determined not only to take care of her “babies” but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory of 9/11 comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the tightrope walker’s “artistic crime of the century.” McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Let the Great World Spin has already been described as a triumphant American novel.

Let the Great World Spin will be published June 30th. Advance copies will be available here on GoodReads!!!!

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Quotes from Zoli

“Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.” — 23 people liked it

“There are no days more full than those we go back to.” — 22 people liked it

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