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-LevittIn 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, … 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.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic.
“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
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This book is made richer as it’s discussed (in a book club, for example). My take? Each character in the book is on a tight wire, literally or metaphorically, and many of us readers are too in our lives. Just as the lead character must carefully negotiate the challenges of the high wire, other characters in the book (and we readers too) experience …
This book shows how we are all interconnected
An enjoyable read. In some places, it went on a too long and felt repetitive but the way he switched narration voices is masterful. Brought back to mind an episode in NYC that had faded from memory
Wow…this magnificent work- one of the critics was quoted as saying it took an Irishman to explain the American psyche to ourselves. Spot on. For the life of me, I can’t understand how McCann is able to accurately portray women of color who live in poverty; women of color who are middle class; the grief that a mother feels at the loss of her …
All of the events in this wonderful novel take place on the day when Philippe Petit walked a tightrope stretched between the top floors of the Twin Towers. Whether writing about a priest who falls in love with the mother of a prostitute in the Bronx or a grieving mother on Park Avenue, Colum McCann’s compassion and transcendent writing will open …
When you finish a book and you just lie there holding it because you don’t want to move from that moment, from that world in which you’ve become immersed– that is this book. It’s been on my shelf for almost ten years. I’d forgotten I had it until someone recommended it to me recently. Glad I picked it up. Reading it is like walking into the lives …
I think Collum McCann is a wonderful writer. I enjoy following his many threads and and seeing how those threads ultimately connect the characters and how those characters interact with the world they find themselves in. I findmyself highlighting so many of Collum McCann’s passages because they pack so much meaning into a sentence. Can’t wait to …
Gifted story-telling.
Ranks right up there with my favorite books of all time
Terrific, interwoven tale.
Open this book anywhere – and read. The beauty of the prose cannot be surpassed. The eloquence isn’t found in the landscape, or a sunset. It is the characters that have a profound luster, the quality of timelessness.
“There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water—it has memory of what it once filled, always trying to get …
Stories tied together by the Trade Center tightrope walk of 1974…I would consider it historical fiction
This book is for the committed reader who falls in love with characters, feels their joys and pains, and comes to understand both the potential and the limitations we all have as we navigate our short sojourn on this island in space – the great world, spinning, and its inhabitants trying to keep our footing as it does.
Very good book….a 4 + stars read
Realistic characters.
I definitely liked the way LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN built the story…a relatively unconnected cast of characters who by the end really are connected.
I like books that take me to places and situations that I could never experience in reality. This book did just that. I came to know the characters and have empathy for many of them. It helped that it took place in New York with which I am familiar, so I could picture their surroundings.
Many stories, told around a single spectacular event. Compelling for the most part, as the individual stories begin to intertwine. The Irish brothers’ story became the main thread for me, and by far the most compelling. I found myself scanning through some of other segments to get back to them. My disappointment was that that story faded into the …
Let the Great World Spin is a beautifully written, heart-wrenching book. McCann has an amazing ability to tell a cross-generational story with multiple characters and have you care about them all, even those that are not particularly likable. I highly recommend this novel.