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Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann (Goodreads Author)

3.90 · rating details · 23,092 ratings · 4,468 reviews

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 Col...more

Hardcover, 349 pages

Published June 23rd 2009 by Random House (first published 2009)

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

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Jan 16, 2010

Maggie rated it

· review of another edition

For a book that's solely supposed to be about characters....I thought all of these characters were amazingly one-dimensional. The self-sacrificing wanna-be priest? The smarter-than-she-looks hooker? The rich lonely Park Ave housewife? Nothing unique or original in there.
Reading it didn't suck really hard, because it's an easy enough read, and there are little splotches of nice writing and insight throughout....but all in all, I didn't get it.
I also didn't get the whole "NYC in ...more

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Jun 03, 2011

Kemper rated it

Shelves: 2011, modern-lit, historical-fiction

A tightrope walker about to pull off one of the biggest stunts ever performed. A committed priest too busy looking out for the downtrodden to take care of himself. A pair of prostitutes who are also mother and daughter. A rich woman crippled by grief and her stoic judge husband. A couple of artists who fled the New York night life. Computer hackers. A brutal car wreck. Slums. Penthouses. Robbery. Charity.

It’s either another day in New York, or it’s the shittiest circus ever....moreA tightrope walker about to pull off one of the biggest stunts ever performed. A committed priest too busy looking out for the downtrodden to take care of himself. A pair of prostitutes who are also mother and daughter. A rich woman crippled by grief and her stoic judge husband. A couple of artists who fled the New York night life. Computer hackers. A brutal car wreck. Slums. Penthouses. Robbery. Charity.

It’s either another day in New York, or it’s the shittiest circus ever.

In 1974, a French acrobat named Philippe Petit made even jaded NewYorkers take notice when he illegally rigged a tightrope between the not-quite-finished World Trade Center towers and then spent the better part of an hour walking it over 1300 feet in the air. In fact, he didn’t just walk the tightrope, he danced, hopped and ran across it as well as laying down on the wire on his back at one point.

Petit’s stunt momentarily captivated the city, and Colm McCann uses that event as the center of a web of intriguing stories about a group of people from all walks of life find themselves unknowingly impacting each other. McCann shifts to a variety of different perspectives, even switching from first person to third person. Whether the narrator is a male Irish immigrant or a black female hooker or a Hispanic single mother, all the voices seem authentic and unique and all of them offer up differing world views that still share a common theme of trying to cling to what they love.

My favorite parts are the interludes where McCann describes Petit’s preparations and the walk itself. Petit was no Jackass-style daredevil. He spent over a year of careful planning and practicing for the moment when he and his crew could sneak to the top of the towers and rig the tightrope. The descriptions of the calm that fell over Petit as he stepped out on the wire and then proceeded to put on a show for the New Yorkers watching far below is almost enough to give a reader vertigo just trying to picture it. And of course, the shadow of 9/11 hangs over the book with the reader knowing that Petit practically walked on air at an incredible height between two objects that don’t even exist any more.

This is some top notch writing with a powerful story of how one man’s desire for a transcendent moment can spin off into more directions than anyone can possibly imagine.(less)

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Jun 20, 2011

Eric rated it

This really may be the first truly profound novel to connect itself with September 11, 2001 and New York City, if only because it does so in such an understated, oblique, and poetically suggestive way. It's also a novel that may take over a hundred pages to truly capture your imagination, but once it does, and once the connective tissue of the disparate group of characters starts to reveal itself, the novel attains a kind of hypnotic and edgy grace for its duration. So richly and deeply are McCa...more

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Jan 15, 2012

Elisa rated it

· review of another edition

L'antidoto a "Chiedi alla polvere"

Separa le tende, apre il triangolo, solleva appena il telaio, avverte un alito di vento sulla pelle: cenere e polvere e luce scacciano l'oscurità dalle cose. [...] Avanziamo incespicando, portiamo un po' di rumore nel silenzio, troviamo in altri di che andare avanti. E' quasi abbastanza.

Colum McCann mi ha fatto sentire a casa. La casa: quel posto in cui puoi rifugiarti, rinchiuderti a rinnegare il mondo intero e un attimo dop...moreL'antidoto a "Chiedi alla polvere"

Separa le tende, apre il triangolo, solleva appena il telaio, avverte un alito di vento sulla pelle: cenere e polvere e luce scacciano l'oscurità dalle cose. [...] Avanziamo incespicando, portiamo un po' di rumore nel silenzio, troviamo in altri di che andare avanti. E' quasi abbastanza.

Colum McCann mi ha fatto sentire a casa. La casa: quel posto in cui puoi rifugiarti, rinchiuderti a rinnegare il mondo intero e un attimo dopo progettare nuovi piani di conquista dell'esterno. Il posto in cui trovi una coperta di affetto confortante, certo, ma anche stilettate pronte a trapassarti da parte a parte, nei tuoi punti più sensibili. Stilettate necessarie o meno, ma presenti.
McCann fa esattamente lo stesso effetto di una madre affettuosa coi piedi per terra. Ti mostra un oggetto che vortica in aria grazie al soffio del vento, ti dice: "Vedi, che bello! Questa è l'armonia di cui a volte è capace il vento". Poi, ti fa notare che quello che vortica in aria è un sacco di plastica abbandonato tra il lerciume del Bronx, tra siringhe insanguinate e futuri interrotti, e che il vento può perdere tutta la sua poesia quando inizia a fregiarsi con nomi di donna come Katrina.

Mi sono sentita a casa perché il racconto si basa su un fatto realmente accaduto e che mi ha colpita qualche mese fa grazie a un documentario: la traversata dello spazio tra le torri gemelle da parte di un funambolo francese, Philippe Petit. Piccolo di nome e di fatto, viso comune, sguardo arzillo, sorriso giocoso, voglia di essere (e non di vivere, perché questo può riuscire anche senza averne voglia, sepolti nell'apatia). McCann ha preso la voglia di essere di quest'uomo, ha puntato il dito verso la sua impresa più strabiliante, un uomo che passeggia a 110 piani di altezza e fa pure il teatrante salutando le folle e facendo inchini. Che bello, pazzesco, fenomenale, cazzo. Come le persone stipate nelle strade di New York col naso per aria, tanto stipate che persino le strade non bastavano più per racchiuderle, ti ritrovi lì col cuore in mano a Petit, con il piede nel suo piede, passo dopo passo, sul filo. Provi l'ebrezza dell'altitudine, il solleticare del vento che ti passa vicino senza farti cadere - finalmente, finalmente - e poi McCann ti butta giù. Come la busta che cade volteggiando, ti scaraventa tra il pubblico, inchiodandoti alle loro vite. E ti ritrovi con un piede sul filo e l'altro al piano terra del World Trade Center.

Mi sono sentita a casa perché la prosa di McCann è meditata ma mai artificiale, ponderata ma mai alleggerita o appesantita da inutili code o tacchi alti per far sembrare magnificente quello che non lo è. Perché con frasi come "cenere e polvere e luce scacciano l'oscurità dalle cose" è capace di mischiare tutto, bene, male e incertezza, e di farne un cocktail che ha il sentore della vita che vedi scorrerti ogni giorno davanti.

Mi sono sentita a casa anche perché questo libro mi è stato regalato da una persona speciale, e nel leggere i passi che l'hanno emozionata sentivo sovrapporsi la mia voce e la sua, sul timbro di McCann. Sarà melenso, forse, ma così è stato per me: bello e umano come una chiacchierata liberatoria.(less)

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Feb 03, 2011

Deborah Edwards rated it

Shelves: personal-faves

Life is full of unexpected synchronicities. The kinds of things that occasionally make you feel that you are connected to a greater web of being, a little sign to let you know that you are not in this alone. Two days before I picked up Colum McCann's extraordinary novel "Let The Great World Spin," I watched the equally extraordinary documentary "Man on Wire" for the second time. Philippe Petit, more angel than human, strung a cable across the Twin Towers in 1974 and performed...moreLife is full of unexpected synchronicities. The kinds of things that occasionally make you feel that you are connected to a greater web of being, a little sign to let you know that you are not in this alone. Two days before I picked up Colum McCann's extraordinary novel "Let The Great World Spin," I watched the equally extraordinary documentary "Man on Wire" for the second time. Philippe Petit, more angel than human, strung a cable across the Twin Towers in 1974 and performed on it for over half an hour, walking, reclining, and literally dancing for the tiny human specks below and for the gods above (who could see him better, after all). It is a breathtaking sight, a man who has become art, who has made of himself something otherworldly and glorious. Like walking into a forest and seeing a unicorn or looking at the seashore and spotting a mermaid on a rock.

It is therefore no wonder that the thread that ties together the vignettes in "Let the Great World Spin" is Petit's momentous tightrope walk as witnessed by the various residents of New York City. McCann introduces us to a number of these residents, some living gritty lives in the projects, others living lives of quiet luxury in a Park Avenue penthouse, still others trying to survive somewhere between the two extremes, in addresses less prone to preconception. And all of these residents are tied to the story and tied to the events of the day in ways that are sometimes obvious but more often as tenuous as a wire strung between buildings. But a wire that stretches. And holds.

McCann's brilliance lies in the fact that each individual we meet is a revelation, a wholly expressed and vivid entity burnt onto our brain cells for all time. When we first meet the young Irish monk, Corrigan, living in a pit in the projects in order to try to protect the downtrodden, the hookers, and the elderly of the neighborhood, we jump into his world without a thought for our own safety, because we are smitten by his desire to bring goodness to bad places. As it turns out, he - and we - should have considered our safety a bit more carefully. So we learn straight off that some stories are not connected by so much as common addresses or economic status as they are by loss, by grief, by people left behind to trudge on when another's goals are left unfulfilled. Other characters will learn similar lessons, some by choice and others by circumstance, but McCann does not leave us behind like onlookers in a theater. He tells us these stories to make us look at our own and to consider the effect our lives have on the lives around us.

Add to this ingenious structure the most perfect prose in modern literature and you have not a book, not a work of fiction, but an experience. McCann's stories are startlingly beautiful in many ways - their description, their construct, their gorgeous dissection of the dreams and memories of their characters. But the windows McCann opens, the doors he peers through, are just as often opening onto heartbreak as they are onto joy. Somehow, though, the grief and loss make the small tribulations and unexpected beauty that much more meaningful, the way a small remembrance can give us an inner photograph of our own unique definition of happiness. "So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow...", after all. McCann's characters allow us a glimpse of their sorrow and their happiness and let us decide if a balance has been achieved. That is, if the living of a life matters in the world, which is what McCann ultimately appears to be weighing in his fiction. Which is why he has allowed us glimpses into lives connected to other lives, and connected to other lives still, like the branches of an ever-expanding tree limb. How does this new person have an impact on the soul I have just become acquainted with, how can this person across town make a mark on the life of the one I just met in the Bronx? Late in the book one of our characters says, "It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected."

Reading "Let the Great World Spin" makes me understand anew that we are all connected, that what we do matters, that our actions send ripples into the world that can affect other people in strange and unexpected ways. And every so often something stunning and remarkable happens that can bind us all together in sorrow or in joy. Like two planes hitting the Twin Towers. Or an angel walking between them. (less)

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Apr 19, 2009

Catherine Siemann rated it

Shelves: 2009-favorites

New York City in 1974 was a run-down, uneasy place, trapped in a spiral of decay. Colum McCann's novel captures the spirit of the place and the people eloquently and movingly, the despair and isolation, the community and the hope. The stories of a disparate group of New Yorkers are linked together by Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers: a monk working among prostitutes in the Bronx; his brother, newly arrived from Dublin; one of the prositutes; a Park Avenue matron (Claire...more

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Dec 23, 2011

Maggi rated it

When I began this book, I was unaware that a central motif is Phillipe Petit's tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Centers, but I could not have been happier when I realized this, as it is one of the most fascinating acts by a human being ever. I loved most of this book, which is a series of interconnected characters' stories, but would have preferred McCann had stayed with the early characters; I didn't find the later characters anywhere near as compelling. A self-sacrificing...more

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Mar 15, 2010

George rated it

Shelves: nook-ereads

SURPRISING. LUMINESCENT. ENGROSSING.

Despite depressing themes; in gratitude of lambent prose that sparkles and twinkles across the page, Colum McCann’s, ‘Let the Great World Spin’ is a joy to read.

“NOBODY FALLS HALFWAY”
(Pg. 149 -- B&N Digital Edition)

After reading the prologue I thought, “Wow. I’m going to like this novel.” By page fifty-five or so, though, I was ready to give it two stars and lament how I should have known b...more

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Jun 16, 2009

Linda rated it

A unique tale that intertwines the lives of several persons that live in New York in 1974.

What a facinating nway to write a book. One chapter you are listening to a womens club who meets because they have lost children...they see/hear of a man walking a tight rope between the Twin Towers. This distracts them from their purpose of the meeting to relieve them of the grief nestled and nurtured insde them. They get back on track to discuss the losses in their lives, still wondering if...more

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Mar 21, 2011

Kristen rated it

My dear friend Russell places this book in his Top 50 books of all time (this is an example of one of the many reasons why I love Russell -- he doesn't have a Top 5 or Top 10 book list, he has a Top 50!), and I think I would have to do the same. It's a beautifully written book that highlights the lives of a dozen or so characters whose stories are interrelated and interwoven with one another around one single event -- Philippe Petit's historic tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. But...more

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May 16, 2011

Lillian rated it

· review of another edition

I recently watched the documentary, Man on a Wire, which chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York City. This novel zooms in on the lives of a few of the thousands of anonymous people who stared in awe at the tiny man-dot moving back and forth on a wire 110 stories in the air. Not all of the characters saw that moment, but each feels its influence. Father John Corrigan, who has an unorthodox ministry to girls who walk the streets, is bringing one of t...more

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Jan 11, 2011

Michele rated it

"There Are So Many Stories To Be Told"
Let The Great World Spin was a book club selection, which was enjoyed by all who attended, and it prompted a lively, intelligent discussion. The story is based on the lives of eleven characters on the day in 1974 when French funambulist, Philippe Petit, danced across a wire (tightrope) secured between the new twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York. It is a well-written, literary masterpiece with highly believable, three-dimensional ...more"There Are So Many Stories To Be Told"
Let The Great World Spin was a book club selection, which was enjoyed by all who attended, and it prompted a lively, intelligent discussion. The story is based on the lives of eleven characters on the day in 1974 when French funambulist, Philippe Petit, danced across a wire (tightrope) secured between the new twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York. It is a well-written, literary masterpiece with highly believable, three-dimensional (complicated) characters.

The characters are extremely diverse, and include an Irish immigrant “monk” with a heart of gold, a Park Avenue wife of a judge/mother of a son who was killed in Vietnam, a Guatemalan nurse, a young artist trying to kick a cocaine habit and living a 1920s lifestyle, a heroin-addicted street-walking prostitute and her daughter and two young children. There is also a chapter where seemingly unrelated characters in Palo Alto, CA—a group of pioneering computer hackers—find a way to contact payphones in Manhattan on the day of Petit’s performance, and try to get a live blow-by-blow account of the event from eye-witnesses. It’s a reminder to the reader of the state of technology at the time, and how different the world of 1974 was from today, when the event, no doubt, would have been broadcast on every television station and the Internet.

This prompted our group to discuss our own “day-in-the-life” experiences we had on Sept. 11, when we first heard of the attacks on the twin towers. Not surprisingly, everyone in the room watched the horrendous events unfold on television.

The high wire event loosely connects all the characters and it feels as though the lives are spinning and folding atop one another in unexpected ways. In spite of the darkness and at times, overwhelming grief associated with these character’s lives, the reader is left satisfied and reminded how different (and important) each life and each character’s personal story is.

I give this book my highest recommendation.

(less)

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Feb 11, 2010

Tung rated it

In my classification system, there are books that are readers’ books (they tell an engaging story); there are books that are writers’ books (they are creative in their prose and technically sound); and then there are GREAT books that tell a good story through solid prose. Let the Great World Spin (the 2009 National Book Award winner) is such a book. The book shares the lives of seemingly random New Yorkers in 1974, and how their lives intertwine. At the surface, they seem connected by what happe...more

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Aug 05, 2011

Brian rated it

Once in awhile you come across a book, that due to some circumstance speaks to you a little louder and clearer than the others. This for me was that book. A novel created from a series of interwoven stories (each chapter depicts another character in the narrative,) it all surrounds the actual tight rope walk between the two towers at the World Trade Center, while the building was being finished in the early 1970s.(One of the first acts of gorilla art in the US.) The writing (as I would expect fr...more

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Jun 09, 2011

Sajda Ouachtouki rated it

Simply put, this is a beauty of a book.

When I first started reading it, I was a bit overwhelmed--too many characters, places and situations for me to keep track of. The book tends to jump from place to place, which can be a bit jarring for any reader. However, the author cleverly weaves all of the stories and characters together in the end. The stories are little moments of life really; fragments of beauty sewn together to create a masterpiece.

The language and style use...moreSimply put, this is a beauty of a book.

When I first started reading it, I was a bit overwhelmed--too many characters, places and situations for me to keep track of. The book tends to jump from place to place, which can be a bit jarring for any reader. However, the author cleverly weaves all of the stories and characters together in the end. The stories are little moments of life really; fragments of beauty sewn together to create a masterpiece.

The language and style used is simple but heavy--every word is there for a reason and there is meaning behind even the most plain of sentences.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth--the filth, the war, the poverty--was the life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn't interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heaven. To him that was a dressing room for hell. Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it. Out of that came some sort of triumph that went beyond theological proof, a cause for optimism against all evidence.

New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve it it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey.

What happens if we make a series of paintings and leave them out in the weather? We allow the present to work on the past. We could do something radical here. Do the formal paintings in the style of the past and have the present destroy them. You let the weather become the imaginative force. The real world works on your art. So you give it a new ending. And then you reinterpret it.

Death, the great democracy of them all. The world's oldest complaint. Happens to us all.

There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in the time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peace. Try to describe it. Feel the rush of sweetness.

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough. (less)

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Dec 14, 2011

Oscar rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: mainstream, propios, 5-estrellas, drama, historia-ficción, favorites

El 7 de agosto de 1974, las personas más cercanas al World Trade Center pudieron observar un hecho asombroso e increíble: había un hombre en la cornisa de una de las Torres Gemelas. Por un momento, cuando se disponía a dar un paso adelante, parecía que se iba a tirar al vacío, pero no era así: el hombre estaba caminando sobre un cable que unía las dos torres, a 110 pisos de altura, a 400 metros de altura. A esa distancia era como si estuviese volando. Hace poco he vuelto a ver la película docume...moreEl 7 de agosto de 1974, las personas más cercanas al World Trade Center pudieron observar un hecho asombroso e increíble: había un hombre en la cornisa de una de las Torres Gemelas. Por un momento, cuando se disponía a dar un paso adelante, parecía que se iba a tirar al vacío, pero no era así: el hombre estaba caminando sobre un cable que unía las dos torres, a 110 pisos de altura, a 400 metros de altura. A esa distancia era como si estuviese volando. Hace poco he vuelto a ver la película documental 'Man on Wire', donde se cuenta con detalle cómo fue planificado el "golpe", y de nuevo me he emocionado. Ese hombre, con su pértiga, caminando, a veces corriendo, por la cuerda floja es increíble. Hay un momento en que incluso se tumba sobre el cable, ¿podéis imaginarlo?, y es de lágrimas en los ojos. Es escalofriante, sobrecogedor, hermoso, un poema viviente, y sólo podía suceder donde suele suceder todo: Nueva York.

El nombre de este héroe es Philippe Petit.

Hay una imagen, incluida en el libro, que no puedes dejar de mirar. En ella se ve un avión tras el funambulista, y casi parece predecir la catástrofe del 2001.

Avión tras Petit

Pero la historia contada por Colum McCann en 'Que el vasto mundo siga girando', no trata sobre Petit y su hazaña. La historia y los protagonistas son otros, aunque Petit también aparece en ciertos momentos. McCann utiliza la hazaña de Petit como trasfondo para su novela. Realmente no hay un único protagonista en el libro, pues se trata de una novela coral. Me parece magnífico sobre todo cómo McCann hila las vivencias de los protagonistas, formando un collage en el que todo está conectado, y como si del funambulista se tratase, el lector, desde las alturas de Nueva York, entra en conocimiento de todo lo que les acontece.

Los protagonistas y sus historias son varios. Estamos en 1974, un año importante para los americanos, cuando Nixon dimitió. En primer lugar tenemos a dos hermanos irlandeses, donde Ciaran visita a Corrigan. Desde siempre, éste ha intentado ayudar a los necesitados, y ahora pertenece a una orden que le ha destinado a Nueva York. Aquí Corrigan trata de ayudar en los posible a las prostitutas de su calle, aunque ello comporte cierto riesgo para él. Esta manera de vivir, casi en la pobreza y rodeado de peligro, no son para nada del gusto de su hermano Ciaran. Esta parte de la historia es francamente buena, porque se nos muestra, mediante los recuerdos de Ciaran, cómo era su vida anterior, así como también somos testigos del Nueva York más miserable.

Otro personaje importante es Claire, una mujer rica cuya vida quedó destrozada al morir su único hijo en la guerra de Vietnam. En el momento de conocerla, se dispone a recibir a una amigas en su casa; se trata de un grupo de madres que tienen en común la pérdida de hijos en la guerra, y cuyas reuniones sirven como ayuda al compartir sus tragedias.

Lara es otra protagonista de la novela con un papel fundamental. Es un mujer joven, pintora, y casada también con un artista, y ambos están sumergidos en un mundo de drogas. Hay más personajes de los cuáles iremos conociendo su papel en la historia: Gloria, una mujer negra perteneciente al grupo de Claire; el juez Solomon, marido de Claire; Tillie, una prostituta amiga de Corrigan; Fernando, fotógrafo aficionado; un grupo de hackers... Llega un momento en que es mejor no comentar nada más de los personajes, porque sus historias están conectadas y es mejor desentrañarlas por uno mismo.

Colum McCann ha escrito una maravillosa novela, en la que sus personajes tienen vida propia, de manera que a su término no puedes evitar el sentir cierta tristeza, ya que no volverás a saber más de ellos. Como se dice en la novela:

"No solemos saber qué es lo que oímos cuando oímos algo por primera vez, pero una cosa es cierta: lo oímos como jamás volveremos a oírlo. Supongo que regresamos al momento para experimentarlo, pero la verdad es que nunca podemos encontrarlo, sino sólo su recuerdo, la huella más tenue de lo que realmente fue, lo que significaba."(less)

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May 03, 2010

Mary Helene rated it

Shelves: bestofshelves

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Best book I've read in a couple of years. I won't state the obvious about the main character (hint: his initials; see pg. 155 in the paperback) because I do think it diminishes the power of this novel to name him. What did I learn from this book? Memorable characters - not just our favorite monk, but Gloria and Jazzlyn's mother, too - loving in unexpected ways. I want stories to do this for me: show me the truth, teach me how to have hope. At the end, when Jasslyn wants to know if her mother wa...more

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Mar 18, 2011

Joan Winnek rated it

Recommended to Joan by: Debra Ratner

This is the book for Debra Ratner's novel course, where we read a novel each term slowly, with much discussion. I had tried to read this book on my own, but it was a library book and so demanded speed, and I just couldn't get into it. In the class (second session today) I'm enjoying it. Writing is amazing; suspense building.

The second chapter, "Miro, Miro, on the Wall," is narrated from the point of view of a woman, Claire Soderberg, and alternates between her account of exte...more

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Aug 10, 2011

Nate J rated it

Shelves: 2011

I wanted to remember some of the lines from this book so I wrote them in my journal. I haven't read anything in a while that has made me ache. The loss in this book and the admiration the narrators have for the central figure is overwhelming as you read it. The author has obviously lost someone special and has captured that loss on paper. Just gorgeously written, especially the chapters titled Miro, Miro on the Wall and Centavos.

SPOILERS AHOY AHOY

To describe this book wo...moreI wanted to remember some of the lines from this book so I wrote them in my journal. I haven't read anything in a while that has made me ache. The loss in this book and the admiration the narrators have for the central figure is overwhelming as you read it. The author has obviously lost someone special and has captured that loss on paper. Just gorgeously written, especially the chapters titled Miro, Miro on the Wall and Centavos.

SPOILERS AHOY AHOY

To describe this book would be misleading. It is a tale of interwoven characters who don't know how they connect, each chapter is written from a different point of view, and there's some play with the chronology of the plot. Pretty standard fiction fare nowadays. Let the Great World Spin feels different to me because it executes a Maris-on-Frasier relationship. We never hear from Maris or McCann's character Corrigan directly, but we get a fully fleshed out character from hearsay. In Corrigan's case, he just keeps getting more and more wholesome and that wholesomeness radiates through the other characters in the novel. That delicate kind of wholesome that isn't preachy or judgmental.

To me, the character Corrigan illustrates the reason I dislike Oprah. He felt no need to wear his good deeds like a medallion - he did not do the tremendously kind things he did for his own self-esteem or for an audience. He did them because it was right. The fact that the reader learns of Corrie's philanthropy is solely because we hear it from other characters. He would never tell us these things if he were to narrate. He was a reminder to people who most needed reminding that there is still good in the world.

Similarities can easily be drawn between him and the unnamed tightrope walker. We are told the tightrope walker's intentions for walking out between the Twin Towers were because the Towers were there to be walked between. Since this stunt took place before reality tv shows and 24 hour news channels, I can somewhat believe it. But somewhere in there he must have done it for notoriety, don't we all have some wish to be remembered, or at least have our 15 minutes of fame? That's the main difference to me between the tightrope walker and Corrie.

The only reason this book didn't get a 5 star from me is because of the phreakers chapter. I'm still wrapping my head around it. I wouldn't say it was a mismatch to the rest of the book; but its reason for being included isn't as obvious. Communication and distance are definite themes of the novel. The beginnings of the internet seem like a good locale for that discussion - but the rest of the book was so tightly written; much more obvious in its motives. Plus there was always a tie in to other characters of the novel somehow in other chapters. Maybe I should read it again, because I don't think any of the people the phreakers got a hold of tied in.(less)

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May 06, 2010

Matt rated it

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
-- Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are almost ten years old, and yet, the wound is still very raw (for those not directly involved, I mean; for those that were there, the wound is forever). Books and films that have dared touch the subject have done so in one of two ways: with near-stultifying decorum and gravity, which makes art into some kind of vague, ...more

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Jul 04, 2011

Carl rated it

UPDATE.
After some colleagues urged me to try it again, I plowed on, finished it, and am willing to move it up to 3 stars. Well written, but still too disjointed, hopping from one unfinished vignette to another, the connections being too loose or too forced for me to enjoy. The characters were too one-dimensional. The ending seemed pretty lame to me as well--the slacker brother becomes a rich software mogul married to the avant-garde artiste whose former husband (and whatever happened to...more

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Jun 09, 2009

Jennie rated it

Recommended to Jennie by: FirstReads! Yay free stuff!

Shelves: firstreads

So, I'm not particularly fond of New York. I really dislike cities--they're full of traffic, noise, mean people and concrete. Not only does New York have a lot of these characteristics, but it takes pride in them. I enjoy a good museum or a nice show, but I wish I didn't have to switch into fight-or-flight mode to arrive there safely. Whenever I visit, I end up exhausted and convinced that the world would be a better place if humanity ceased to exist.

I'm also not particularly fon...more

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Mar 29, 2010

Beth Anne rated it

Recommended to Beth Anne by: brent

i really liked this book. there were two or three parts/chapters that i didn't love...but overall, it was an amazing character study...showing so many people living such different lives, but at the same time each and every character was living life and just surviving.

it certainly wasn't a joyous book...not really happy in any way...but not really sad either. it left me feeling lonely, really. what i liked most about the novel is that it was really just a book of how everyone can b...more

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Jan 30, 2012

Joe rated it

This one never quite got off the page for me. Couple of reasons why: 1) The structure of the book--loosely connected novellas and stories--keeps the reader from getting to know any of the characters, constantly introducing new ones just when you get interested in the last, and totally abandoning a few who clearly have a lot more to say. 2) The component parts of the whole felt workshoppy--craft-wise, they're all a little too on the noise, and rarely did McCann offer any surprises to ameliorate h...more

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Jan 23, 2011

Clifford rated it

Let the Great World Spin was such a whirlwind of sadness and hope that it could only be described as life. It had echoes of East of Eden to me with its ability to fill tragedy with such unexplainable hope. I’m left with a sense of loneliness, isolation, hope, and courage. I feel oddly better equipped for life and yet I don’t know what equipment I have been offered. As I consider the metaphor of the tightrope walker I am compelled to draw a series of life parallels. To borrow Morrie Shwartz (Tues...more

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Mar 10, 2010

Leigh rated it

Fun read, well-written, good use of the "strangers with interconnected lives" plot device that seems to be popping up all over the place recently. I'm a little over the "Philip Petit" trope (the high-wire guy in the 70s that walked between the two towers) or maybe I just thought McGann could have done something more interesting with that act since it becomes the connective thread through all the stories. Thought the whole thing (form, plot devices, substance of stories) felt...more

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Feb 20, 2011

sab rated it

Recommended by Aunt Sandy and I loved it. Well crafted, thought provoking and poignant, I absolutely loved getting to know a character and then learning of their developments later through another character's perspective. So many gut wrenching moments and people and Colum McCann allowed me to feel for each one of them (of course, some more than others!) I am awed by McCann's pacing and subtleties and impressed that he made me so sympathetic to Corrigan and his desperate inner turmoil. (The mor...more

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Jun 10, 2010

Jessica rated it

i have no, *no* idea how this guy wrote the characters in this book, but each is unique and so human. and as sara said, heroic. i saw in the end why this is a 9/11 book, though it wasn't obvious, but i hesitate to explain or i might give something away. there were a few parts that did not grab me, but they are barely worth mentioning - interestingly though, they were those portions that had to do in some way with the tightrope walker himself. what happens on the ground is just so much more in...more

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Oct 13, 2010

Mariposa Arillo rated it

Ooh, what beautiful language. Some of the stories we easier for the author to tell than others, but I was taken in by the book as a whole, and by how the stories were woven together. Delicious.

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Dec 29, 2011

Lotte rated it

· review of another edition

Dejlig bog, som jeg gerne vil anbefale videre. Og så tager den jo udgangspunkt i en af de begivenheder, som jeg synes er helt fantastisk - nemlig "Man on wire" i New York i 70'erne (var det 72?). Manden, der simpelthen spændte en line mellem de de to Twin Towers og dansede rundt derude i næsten en time. Jeg har set dokumentaren to gange, den kan også anbefales.

Men bogen handler altså ikke om denne begivenhed - den bliver kun brugt som afsæt til de andre historier, der på foru...more

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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 othe...moreColum 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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“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.” — 62 people liked it

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.” — 59 people liked it

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