In both novels these acts of bravery and skill become metaphors for more everyday acts of daring, while at the same time serving as narrative anchors for Mr. McCann’s kaleidoscopic look at an expanding circle of lives.

But while “TransAtlantic” makes for a sometimes bumpy ride, it eventually opens out to become an affecting story about the ways the tsunami of history can sideswipe people or lift them to unexpected heights — about the ways dreams and ambition and loss can be handed down generation to generation, as seen through one family of remarkable women.
Mr. McCann has an annoying habit here of embroidering his prose. He writes about skies becoming “a candelabra of violence” during the war; of New York appearing to immigrants arriving by ship like “a cough of blood” on the horizon, with the sun going down behind the buildings; of a woman sliding “like a seal, out of any old sadness she carried” when she hears of the Good Friday peace agreement.

Such pretty, creative-writing-class flourishes are unnecessary and distracting — they pull the reader’s attention away from the real achievement of this novel: its deeply moving portrait of Lily and her descendants, whose stories of hope and survival are played out against the vast, backlit diorama of a century and a half of Irish-American history. 
This is a great summer read, reminding me of the power of our ability to reinvent ourselves and move in a dramatically new direction with a single decision or act.