SHOOK

Let me just start off by saying that I am beyond SHOOK. I’ll give you a little background on how I function. You see, I tend to be absorbed into the world of whatever book I’m reading; I become the book. “Read Chapter 1 for homework,” Professor Purves said. “It’s a great read,” she said. While I do not disagree with either of those statements, they did NOT prepare me for what the book had in store.

The prologue begins with the whole “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” type of scenario where a man (Petit) is standing on top of one of the twin towers is New York City. Suspense is built as people of all backgrounds watch anxiously at what he is going to do. Is he going to jump or nah? The prologue ends with him starting to tightrope walk to the other tower, to everyone’s surprise.

Chapter 1 starts with the story of two boys and their mother and a physically absent father in Dublin, Ireland. The unnamed narrator is the older brother, while the younger one is John Andrew but goes by Corrigan, which is actually the family name. Now, Corrigan is a special character. He is what I see when I look into the mirror. “[Corrigan] might have been naive, but he didn’t care; he said he’d rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic,” his older brother describes him (McCann 21). Corrigan was blind in his love in that he did not discriminate in who to love, and he made himself vulnerable and open rather than be a skeptic like his brother. This is probably also the reason why I don’t find any of the characters as alien or baffling.

Corrigan really intrigues me; he seems to have no limit whatsoever. Even his brother rages on and on about how Corrigan is being taken advantage of. I believe McCann captures humanity beautifully: so beautifully, in fact, that I see myself in all the characters. Corrigan drinks starting at a very early age with the poor and the alcoholics, not to get drunk but to feel the pain of people everyone else considers trash. We see his love for people again when he moves to The Bronx, following the orders of the order of monks he joined. We see how is life is like through the narrator’s eyes, who follows because of a war in Ireland.

When the narrator joins Corrigan in The Bronx, he receives a culture shock. He sees a black person for the first time, and he cannot stop staring. Younger me relates to the narrator, because a village in India looks nothing like the Big Apple. After one hell of a rollercoaster ride in the Bronx, we end the chapter in a hospital bed, which made me fling the book across the room. Let me just end with saying that I am very much still SHOOK.