Let the Great World Spin in Pick-a-Shelf

Apr 27, 2020 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, 2020-read, pas-readit-2020, rws-2020-spring, kindle-dropbox

These are richly composed characters, but the book still felt a bit like a creative writing exercise. Remember the movie Crash? Me neither, but I remember generally that the premise was that there was a car accident that brought random people's lives into intersection. That's this book.

Loosely structured around a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974, the book tells the individual story of a large handful of semi-related New York characters--the prostitutes, including a mother/daughter ...more

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Aug 08, 2014 Sunflower rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, fiction-read-2014

"The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough." I thought this book was brilliant. It is written about and around an event- a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, before they were fully completed. The walk itself is not the story, but a connection between a number of people and their ordinary, even depressing at times lives, and eventually connections with each other. Each character is interesting and well drawn except the tightrope walker himself, who appears to float above it all in more wa ...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Nicole rated it liked it

Shelves: audio-book, 2011

It's hard to rate this book, as it is a fictional collection of stories that weave together around two main events - a man walking a tight rope across the Twin Towers in NYC and a car crash. All the characters are interconnected in some way, and the perspective range from a judge living on Park Avenue to a hooker in jail.
I thought it well written and McCann did a wonderful job capturing the different voices, but I didn't particularly enjoy the book. ...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Joanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: from-the-library, audio-book, bookclub, irish, next-best-bookclub, 2011

God, this book was good. When reading what it was about I had little interest in reading it but I got the audio from the library and gave it a shot. It totally sucked me in. I found myself thinking about it all the time and dying to get back to the characters.

It might be more accurate to call this a short story collection. The book focuses on the lives of various people living in New York at the time of Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. I was amazed at how all the stories came tog ...more

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May 04, 2011 Melissa Stebbins rated it really liked it

I loved this book. The way the author wove the lives of the characters together was masterful. I found myself waiting to see how the final few connections between the various characters would be made. Lovely writing, great characters and not a difficult read.

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