Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - Colum McCann's beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit's daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author's most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century." A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal. Praise for Let the Great World Spin
"This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it's a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There's so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed."--Dave Eggers
"Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It's a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it's a novel about families--the ones we're born into and the ones we make for ourselves."--USA Today "The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air."--Esquire "Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCann's marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down."--The Seattle Times "Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCann's heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow."--Entertainment Weekly "An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall."--O: The Oprah Magazine
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author's most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century." A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal. Praise for Let the Great World Spin
"This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it's a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There's so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed."--Dave Eggers
"Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It's a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it's a novel about families--the ones we're born into and the ones we make for ourselves."--USA Today "The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air."--Esquire "Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCann's marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down."--The Seattle Times "Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCann's heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow."--Entertainment Weekly "An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall."--O: The Oprah Magazine
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Community Reviews
the is beyond genius storytelling… how the hell do you right about 9/11 while set decades before it’s happened? very sad very raw
The author used Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the towers as the backdrop for this novel. It was an event that riveted the city. It caused the population to stop in its tracks and began to weave a connectedness between seemingly unconnected characters. It brought out all different emotions in the viewers. Some thought the act was joyful; others thought it irresponsible and narcissistic. But the walk wasn't the story by any means. It was just an introduction to the diverse population of NYC in 1974,from a burned out Bronx to the Upper East Side, with a never-ending war in Vietnam and a cynical judicial system. A lot of comparisons can be made to that time in NY and the time immediately post-9/11 in NY. I'm glad I read it.
I really thought this was going to be a story about the WTC tightrope walker, but instead McCann uses him as a backdrop for the drama going on on the ground in NYC in 1974. He gradually introduces the diverse characters populating the city and then very subtly the interweaving of their stories slowly emerges.
At the end of the book, we're in the present day, and a young woman is longing for someone who was lost long ago, and wishing that person could be there to share in the beauty of her world, then realizes, if that person were still here, her own life could be very different, in a not-so-good way, and you wonder how she reconciles those conflicting feelings.
I loved the afterword by the author and the Q&A (in the paperback edition I have) where the author kind of explains his thought process in writing the book and of course a discussion about 9/11 and how that may have framed the story.
At the end of the book, we're in the present day, and a young woman is longing for someone who was lost long ago, and wishing that person could be there to share in the beauty of her world, then realizes, if that person were still here, her own life could be very different, in a not-so-good way, and you wonder how she reconciles those conflicting feelings.
I loved the afterword by the author and the Q&A (in the paperback edition I have) where the author kind of explains his thought process in writing the book and of course a discussion about 9/11 and how that may have framed the story.
This is a beautifully written novel with so many great stories that all come together nicely, in the end. While it's quite sad and could possibly use just a little more happiness, I think it's well worth a read.
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