In 1974, a French acrobat performed an amazing feat: he walked – not just walked, but danced – along a wire strung up 110 stories high between the newly-constructed twin towers of the World Trade Center. This stunt has become legend, documented in the award-winning 2008 film Man on Wire. It also has become the central hub of a dazzling novel by Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin. The book is not about Phillipe Petit’s walk, as much as it is about the wide array of New Yorkers whose lives are forever altered on the day that he stepped into the air. McCann presents an enormous cast of characters that is a microcosm of the city, itself a microcosm of America. There are immigrants, wealthy housewives, prostitutes, judges, artists and priests, all living together even if they sometimes seem to be pushing themselves apart. The interlinked stories of the many narrators in this novel meditate on the hope that rises from grief and loss, as unlikely and unexpected as a man dancing in midair. ( )

Enjoyable read. Human side of NY. Wild coincidinces, but he makes them work.

This is a wellwritten novel about New York City, and the people who lived there in the early 1970s. It opens with a view of the city from Irish brothers, and expands from there. The language is wonderful. ( )

I read this book for two reasons: Its title (derived from the seventh last paragraph of Lord Tennyson's magnificent poem "Locksley Hall"; and it won the 2009 National Book Awrd for fiction and I try to read all such winners (this is the 50th one i have read). While there are parts of the book which repel and drag, it has a very strong finish and when I completed the reading I was quite stunned by the power of the story told. I did not appreciate the excessive attention to prostitutes and their language, nor the fall of Corrie from his vocation, but much of the other parts of the book are exceptionally well-done, including the portrayal of the Judge and his wife, as well as Gloria. This if the probably the best novel I have read this year. ( )

At first glance (or read) this book seems to be a collection of short stories that take place in New York City around the time that a tightrope walker walked across a rope between the Twin Towers as they were being built in the 1970s. However, the reader soon realizes that these stories are intertwined and are beautifully woven together into one overlying story told in a cacophony of voices.

McCann has chosen New York City as the setting for this novel and the diverse peoples of the city are his characters. His first character is Corrie who was originally from Ireland but moved to America and has taken up residence in the projects of the Bronx where he helps the elderly and prostitutes alike. The next series of stories involve a group of women who have lost son's in the Vietnam War. Lastly, are a couple of stories involving a young married couple who have chosen to abandon their reckless drug-riddled life and start anew in the countryside. Interspersed between these stories are vignettes about the tightrope walker and his great mission to cross between the Twin Towers. When tragedy strikes, these independent series of stories come together into one powerful overriding tale.

This is by far one of my favorite books of 2009. Each story is written beautifully and can easily stand on its own. Yet the connection between all of the stories brings together so many different voices and narrators that the overall story is overwhelmingly powerful. McCann's descriptions of poverty, grief, love, and compassion can not go with praise. Though he is originally from Ireland, he is able to tell of life in New York City better than most actual residents would be able. ( )

I love stories about New York so I was really excited to receive Let the Great World Spin. It didn't disappoint. All of the intertwined tales grabbed my attention and I wasn't ready for them to end. The only one that I didn't love was the story of the actual tightrope walker. For some reason - I really can't explain why - I hurried through those parts, anxious to get back to the other people's stories. McCann did a wonderful job of capturing this period of time in NYC as well as capturing the essence of a diverse group of characters. ( )

Interconnecting lives in New York City based mostly in the 70's. There is a very interesting tie between the stories. ( )

Colum McCann has accomplished a rare feat: he's a foreigner, but he's brought out a more sophisticated, forceful, and American novel about that most fascinating and aggravating of American cities, New York, than almost any American author could. "Let the Great World Spin" sheds its knowing and compassionate light on the lives of a handful of New Yorkers - two women distraught over the loss of sons in Vietnam, the judge husband of one of these women, a drug-addled avant garde artist struggling with heavy guilt, a clique of prostitutes in the South Bronx and the naif who strives to minister to them, the Central American woman who falls for this would-be priest.

The daily struggles with grief, poverty, and hopelessness swirl - spin - around the focal point of an amazing, only-in-New York stunt that was perpetrated on a sultry summer day in 1974: a tightrope walk between the tops of the two World Trade Center towers. In fact, this unnamed daredevil's portrait is one of the most captivating and entertaining parts of the book. It is one of the continuing strands Mr. McCann so skilfully weaves together; they spin and swirl in an ever-tightening whirlpool centered around the nexus of the tightrope stunt. The stunt does not function as a deus ex machina device, although it can seem that way. As in "Five Skies" by Ron Carlson, this one high aspiration, this out-of-this-world concept, carries a symbolic weight. People strive to rise above in this story, and the tightrope walker carries not only their hopes and dreams aloft, but those of millions of other New Yorkers, too.

Mr. McCann's prose works wonders with the internal dialogs here; it contains just the right level of language: he puts just the appropriate slang, insult, street patois, and curse in the mouths each of these characters. His concept is ingenious and his somewhat unorthodox way of twirling the yarns together into a cohesive whole achieves its object brilliantly. This book takes and breaks our hearts, heals them partway back up, and then gives us hope for these characters and for their fellow hopefuls here on the ground. This is the best book I have read this year. I honor Mr. McCann's achievement, and encourage in the highest possible terms, other LT'ers to take it up! Oh, you will be pleased and enriched! ( )

a rather lovely, "Crash" like pastiche of intertwining lives whose connection is deeper than the event they all experience. ( )

Intertwined stories of "ordinary lives" on one day in New York, August 7, 1974. The description of these lives in a time when NYC was in decline are wonderful. ( )

Colum McCann has written a powerful fable that holds your attention and challenges your imagine in ways you wouldn't believe possible.
John A. Corrigan, aka Corrie, and his brother Ciaran are transplanted Dubliners living in the Bronx, Where Corrie, a member of a Catholic religious order, ministers to the needs of the prostitutes patrolling the underpass on the Major Deegan Expressway. He brings them coffee on cold nights, and lets them use the bathroom in his nearby apartment. He is, as one of them describes him, "like a Motown whitey."
Corrie also assists with elderly patients at a local nursing home, and he is attracted to a nurse named Adelita, who clearly loves him. The direction of the story seems predictable enough, until tragedy strikes. McCann takes his readers through a wrenching series of plot twists and turns, and draws in seemingly disparate cast of characters, including a group of women who meet to remember their sons who died in Vietnam; a judge; a high-school boy who photographs graffiti in the subway, and a pair of hippie artists with a direct connection to the tragedy that derails six lives. They are tied together by a tightrope walker who strings his line between the still vacant Twin Towers and puts on an inspiring show on a summer morning.
The tightrope walker is loosely based on Philippe Petit, who performed his feat on August 7, 1974, but McCann is careful not identify his aerialist directly with Petit. Instead, he allows the reader to get into the mind of the performer, and see the event through his experiences.
Ultimately, a generation must pass before the events of that day coalesce to fulfill Corrie's ironic prediction about the world: "Someday the meek might actually want it." ( )

I received an ARC through LT early this summer, but I just got around to picking this up. This isn't a book full of big ideas, but instead a book full of small truths. It tells a set of linked stories about disparate characters and how their lives intersect.
The book opens with a man walking across a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers in August 1974. The stories that follow are loosely linked by this event, and the characters are linked themselves by the events of that day and all their repercussions. The writing is wonderful, and every character offers an original, thoughtful perspective on the events surrounding the day. McCann writes with great emotional truth. Highly recommended. ( )

I enjoyed this book very much. The writer tells the story of several, very different lives in 1974 NYC and their experience on the day a man walks a tightrope between the 2 newly built twin towers of the World Trade Center. Told in a style similar to the movie, Crash, the connection of the characters to each other, which at first seem nonexistent, is revealed as the reader is taken further into their lives. The detail this writer brings to 1974 Manhattan and the Bronx is amazing. Everytime I picked it up, I felt I was diving back into 1970's NYC. ( )

Mccann is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers.

This is an elaborate but beautifully written novel built around Phillippe Petit's walk between the World Trade Center towers. It's a real New York book and if you ever want to get the feeling for the 'bad old days' of NYC in the 1970s, you could start here (of course there's not a lot of the good part of NYC in the 1970s either, but that's not the point, is it).

Touching portrayals of hookers, pimps, and various other assorted characters as they bump into each other in a 'six degrees' fashion. ( )

I spent a lot of time with this book .One quick read through. And then one long pawing and pondering over. Poking it here and there.

Picking up the snapshots that constitute the novel to examine. Then putting them back down spread across the floor to assess relationships and appreciate wholistically.

"Thick" was the only word that came to mind. Thick. Followed by dense.
Followed by adjectives that typically describe clouds and vegetation in the wild.

But, rather than vegetation this novel is a "thick" packet of snapshots taken by an "artsy" photographer. A thick stack of vintage nyc photographs in stunning detail retouched in photoshop with the contrast jacked all the way up. The novel is in modern day colloquialism of twentysomethings "good stuff". Extremely well done excellent rending of grit stopping just beneath hard boiled. Worth it, if beauty in the ugly is your thing.

That said, if you are looking for deep engrossing convoluted plot line I am not so sure you will find it here. Instead, the characters are engrossing even if linked together somewhat simplistically by tying all their lives into the image of the tight rope walker.

I felt like it was a modern day "fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a tune", only
with nyc substituted for a homely village and prostitutes instead of virtuous daughters. But the strength in the detail of the characters otherwise carries out a symphony worthy of any and every audience member who might listen.

In listening, I was shocked at the how seamlessly I could step into and identify with any character written. Even if their voice was saying something I would find repulsive in another setting or presentation. It's my feeling that such an identification can only happen within reading the work of a literary genius.The variety of writer who makes any world and moment inhabitable. So:

Pros: Dense. Thick. Borderline Gritty Images.
Cons: Predictable in Path ( )

Colum McCann's latest novel is a tour de force, a breathtaking sweep of people's lives at one moment in time. On August 7, 1974, a young man walked a tightrope between the new Twin Towers in New York, inspiring and awing those below. McCann's novel takes this event and surrounds it with the men and women of the city and that time, immersing us in their lives, language and heartbreak. Each story is connected, all tied together by that one day in August, but each person's story is uniquely crafted by McCann, whose writing is lyrical, poetic and attuned to the language of the character, time and place. The story of Tillie, a Bronx hooker, and Claire Soderberg, Park Avenue housewife, are told in their own voice and tone, believable, complex and beautiful. All the characters, flawed and imperfect, have a voice, tied together by the last story of a young woman searching for an identity lost that day in 1974. This novel is highly recommended, those already familiar with McCann's work will not be surprised by his new finely crafted novel.
(Read July 2009) ( )

On August 7, 1974 the unimaginable happened. A quarter mile above ground a man walked on a wire suspended between the unfinished World Trade Towers. In Colum McCann's engrossing novel, “Let the Great World Spin,” this surreal act serves as a launching point to highlight the very real lives below.
McCann's talent is evident as he deftly changes voices between characters whose lives sometimes flow in parallel and sometimes collide as they recount the events of a day, and of lives, that vary between momentous, benign and tragic.
We first meet Irish brothers Corrigan and Ciaran (whose name, as with several characters, we only learn in subsequent chapters) way up in the Bronx as Corrigan attempts to assist in the lives of a group of prostitutes including mother and daughter Tilly and Jazzlyn.
In other chapters we meet Claire and Gloria, two members of a Vietnam support group for grieving moms; Lara, a young artist who is in an automobile accident with Corrigan; Judge Soderberg (Claire’s husband), who sentences both Tilly and the funambulist (Petit); a young photographer who happens to be at the right place to capture a stunning moment in time; and even a handful of young computer geeks in Palo Alto who call pay phones around the towers in an effort to be connected to the scene. Interspersed between these encounters we also get into the head and heart of a man who finds beauty and “another kind of awake” in walking through the sky.
The skill with which McCann interweaves these diverse characters and the unexpected ways their lives connect gives the novel a “Crash”-like feel. It is fascinating to anticipate how and where the characters will reappear, if at all. Sometimes the link is obvious and enduring and occasionally it is subtle and fleeting.
Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin" beautifully intertwines the extraordinary walk above with the ordinary lives below, and we come to appreciate the “extra” hidden in the ordinary. ( )

After watching "Man on Wire," I really appreciated how Petit's feat was the backdrop to McCann's novel. I found myself drawn into the lives of all of the characters because of the depth of each of their stories and personalities. I enjoyed book 4 the best, when it all comes together. ( )

I enjoyed reading about these various people in new york city, and I look forward to reading more from this author. ( )

Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin" follows the lives of a group of individuals immediately before and after Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974. Although the book does not feature Petit as one of its central characters, the lives of all of the main characters intersect with Petit's walk in a key way, creating a neat puzzle around the event. The book looks at people from all walks of life in NYC in the 1970s--from Bronx hookers to a Park Avenue matron. As the lives of each of these people comes together you wonder who will survive this vicious city, where people and souls seem to be eaten alive.

This was the first work I had ever read by McCann, and wow, was I impressed. McCann is a master storyteller and the way he weaves words together creates such vivid pictures, you feel like you can smell the smoke from the burning Bronx. While this novel wasn't my typical style--it is much darker and rawer than what I typically read--McCann's literary gifts can only leave a reader in awe. I did have a few problems with the structure of the novel--the jumping from character to character sometimes felt jumpy and abrupt, but I think this technique was intended to jar the reader--mimicking the realities of life in 1970s New York. The ending also felt out of place to me.

While this is not exactly light summer reading, I would definitely recommend this book to fans of great english literature. This work has marked McCann as one of the greats of the modern world, and I can't wait to see what else he produces. ( )

What a beautiful read! Ten stories of characters in New York City interconnected in part by their relationship to Phillippe Petit's morning walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. People who persevere despite oppressive childhoods, poverty, drug use, and overwhelming loss--often because another has touched them with kindness, granted them some small epiphany. People who on the surface share little in terms of race, ethnicity, education, or class--but who share so much of a time and place made epic by one singular moment of courageous artistic expression and the more tragic event it obliquely foreshadows. Moving and memorable. ( )

To start off--I am not one of those who was lucky enough to get an early reviewer's copy of this book.

One of the great themes in literature is the inter-connectedness of people to other people but how oblivious at the same time their creator's fictional characters tend to be to that concept. 'Let the great world spin' revolves very much around the coincidental. Here the fictional walks side by side as an actualized believable reality. We all live lives central to ourselves but that centrality has a way of leaking out and affecting other people and yet more often than not we are blind to it. At least that seems a notion that McCann (very successfully IMO) attempts to get at.

If there is a central day and event that holds McCann's book together--it is taken from a real event of August 7, 1974 when Frenchman Philippe Petit walks a tightrope early in the morning to hundreds of surprised onlookers between the North and South towers of New York City's World Trade Center. That event glances off into the lives of all the other characters in the book--many of them living or about to live through their own personal tragedies--the do gooder Irish monk Corrigan living in a slum in the Bronx sharing his time with black prostitutes--particularly Tillie and her daughter Jazzlyn and her two daughters. Gloria who lives two floors above and has lost all 3 of her sons to the Viet Nam War meeting up with other mothers of dead sons in the penthouse of Claire (the wife of a district judge) on Park Ave. McCann as in his title spins his stories off his characters and they rebound again off others in fascinating ways.

Let the Great World Spin is also about epiphanic moments in people's lives. Certainly Petit's on his tightrope--realizing his dream--but there are also understated moments of awe and insight by just about every one of the characters. For a writer to get the essence of these moments of insight across he has to get to the essential of what he is trying to convey and McCann seems to do this almost effortlessly and the greatest part of the reason seems to emanate from the basic idea of shared humanity that is the heart and soul of his book.

And as well this is a New York City novel--one in which the Towers play a large role--but that only in the most oblique way references the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The people looking up at Petit are much the same as the people who on that fateful September day will once again look up at the very same towers. They are also the same people who will go back to their lives and struggles afterwards much the same as McCann's characters here.

Concluding if there was one book I'd compare it to--it reminds me quite a lot of Ondaatje's 'In the skin of a lion' for one which is my favorite Ondaatje. It has the same kind of tone and texture--doing in a way for NYC what Ondaatje does for the city of Toronto. Anyway Let the Great World Spin is a great read and is highly recommended. ( )

I did not want this book to end. Not only will I read this book again, I will be talking about it and recommending it for a long time.

It's a beautifully written story of various people whose lives are interconnected by a tight-rope walker who walked between the World Trade Center buildings in 1974. The characters include a hooker, judge, a mother who lost her son in Vietnam, the judge's wife, a religious man and others.

While the event is extraordinary, especially to think about now, the lives are exquisitely common. The uniquely flawed and frail characters grasp the reader. ( )

Review-Colim McCann, Let the Great World Spin
In Let the Great World Spin, Colim McCann takes the vision of a man walking on air 110 stories above the ground and recreates a moment in time in 1974. Many seemingly unrelated characters are living their lives in New York as the tightrope walker makes his trip. By the end of the novel, McCann has woven the threads of their lives and the times effortlessly into a loving portrait of a city.
McCann’s characters, as diverse as an Irish monk, a black prostitute, a Jewish judge, his upper class wife, both destroyed by the loss of their son, Joshua in Vietnam, the nerdy computer programmers working near the Towers, the other women of the group who lost their sons in Vietnam, the tightrope walker himself, leap off the page.
The novel resonates in the reader long after the last page is turned. Triumphant, exuberant, uplifting. Run right out and buy it today. ( )

At its core, Let the Great World Spin is a novel about a particular city—New York City—at a particular point in time—the summer of 1974. McCann illuminates his subject through a series of stories that overlap in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways. Tying the whole thing together is Philippe Petit's daring tightrope walk between the newly constructed towers of the World Trade Center, representing the idea that the “core reason for it all [is] beauty.” While I generally avoid comparing books to other works, the similarities between this novel and Crash—the 2005 movie about interconnecting stories in L.A.—are too striking to go unmentioned.

The diverse perspectives, voices, and writing styles make this novel an engaging reading experience. As is inevitable, some stories and characters are better than others, but McCann’s writing is strong throughout. With books like this, there exists a danger that the constant shifting will be unpleasantly frenetic, but McCann avoids this pitfall by taking his time to fully develop each story and character. Let the Great World Spin is occasionally messy and unfocused, and the last chapter is a bit of a let-down, but these minor imperfections are easily forgiven. Overall, this vibrant book will appeal to many readers, and I expect it to be one of this summer’s favorites.

This review also appears on my literary blog Literary License. ( )