I used to really enjoy short story collections. I used to read scary ones in elementary school, depressing ones in high school, and I even read trippy ones in college (thinking I was cool). But sometime during my post-college years, my interest in them began to wane. I don’t know whether this can be ascribed to getting older, but I do know that I now get frustrated with short stories. The time I invest in the setting and the characters, acclimating to the storytelling style and pacing—well, there’s not enough return on my investment. I just don’t have time for it anymore.

Thankfully, this book is not a collection of short stories. Rather, it is a single story told in a collection, and the collection holds together nicely. Let the Great World Spin is actually the story of a particular place and time: New York City, August 1974. It is about the lawlessness and drudgery of the city’s inhabitants, it is about the angst of war, but it is also about those shining moments of hope and human achievement that pierce the angst and shred the drudgery to pieces. It is about two characters in particular, one real and one fictional, who serve as a sort of lamppost for a city steeped in darkness and self-loathing. Interestingly, both characters are outsiders—new arrivals from foreign soil—as if pulled in by a city that needs just a little bit of light, please.

There is plenty to like about this book, too: its coherency, its writing style, its characters. But once again, I expose myself as a sucker for imagery. McCann uses metaphor like nobody’s business and I fricken loved it. I ended up reading this for our new book club on Goodreads, which I started with a bunch of friends as an excuse to squeeze even more books onto my reading list. And I have to admit, this was an excellent first pick.



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