Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
349 pages, @2009
As you know, if you read the blog post last month, my friend Jen and I had the pleasure of going to one of Colum McCann’s book readings for Let the Great World Spin. This was the first book that I finished in my 2010 quest to read one book a week!
How to describe what this novel is about… Essentially it centers around Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk in the 70’s in NYC. For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, he walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers, without a net below him, nor was he attached to any kind of safety device. Colum McCann said at the reading that he wanted to compare the feat of Philippe Petit with the feat of people walking their own tightrope down on the ground – the challenges that the everyday person faces in their life. Their are a lot of characters in this book, but the main stories center around John Corrigan, an religious Irish man, who lives in the Bronx and tries to help out those around him, namely the hookers that live and work in his neighborhood. Two of those hookers, who are also central to the story, are Tilly and her daughter Jazzlyn. Then the other main storyline going on follows a group of women, mother’s of men lost during the Vietnam war. Namely Claire, a wealthy woman who lives on the Upper East Side, and Gloria, a mother of three lost sons from the Bronx.
McCann’s prose is poertry. He is one of those writers that as you read his novels (or even when you hear him speak) you are just blown away by the way he phrases thoughts, ideas, descriptions, etc. This novel was no exception. It’s a powerful story of right vs. wrong, compassion, passion, empathy, friendship, love and family. I will say however, the one thing that I could have done without was the sheer number of characters in this novel. It almost in a way reminded me of a Toni Morrison novel, where as you’re reading it you’re introduced to all of these characters and they have a purpose but it’s hard to see until the end of the novel as they are all twined together. Not that being compared to Toni Morrison is necessarily a bad thing.
Before I leave off, I wanted to give you a sample of McCann’s beautiful prose. The following paragraph in the novel is a description of love:
“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you’re lucky enough to fine 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.”
The following paragraph is from the reading guide in the back of the novel:
“There is an act of creative reading, and writing is more about a reader’s imagination than anything else. A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader. This is the intimate privilege of art. In fact, it’s the intimate privilege of being alive. When telling stories we are engaged in a democracy like no other.”
Ah, if only I could think or write or express myself in such a beautiful way. I’ll continue trudging along on my little blog and hopefully over the years I’ll get better:)
4 Stars
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What author have you read that you feel just writes on a different level than other authors?
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