Berlin-Warszawa Express

March 27, 2017
McGrath’s debut is a tight, vulnerable, trimmed-to-the-bone experience, a fictionalized memoir that begins in 2010 as the author—a folk musician—is touring Europe alongside a ragtag group of Canadian musicians. Low on funds and even lower on morale, McGrath draws readers into his tale of drunkenness, chance encounters, long nights on the floors of airports, and surviving a skinhead club in Chemnitz thanks to the magic of Neil Young. Suffering underlies much of McGrath’s story, from physical mishaps to emotional upheavals, including a reckoning with his growing reliance on alcohol to make it through each night on the road. But there’s a larger question of suffering at the heart of this book: chiefly, what artists are or are not expected to give of themselves in order to “make it,” and if what it takes is even worth it in the end. Readers only get brief glimpses of McGrath’s life back in Canada, and his descriptions of the time between overseas tours are like the filler tracks on an album, the songs between the hits. This book isn’t an album, though; it’s less a narrative and more a mosaic, a playlist of moments that define a life or a story.