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Set in 1974, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of an age -- when Nixon resigned, soldiers returned home from Vietnam, the oil crisis was at its peak and the technology of computers emerged on the horizon. But it is also a brilliant reflection of the present, with its examination of faith, art, love and belonging.
The novel begins one August morning as a tightrope walker makes his way, through the dawn light, between the World Trade Center towers, stunning thousands of watchers below. Using the true story of Philippe Petit as a pull-through metaphor, McCann crafts a portrait of a city and a people. Corrigan, a radical, young Irish monk, struggles with his demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gathers in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who have died in Vietnam, only to discover how much divides them even in their grief. Farther uptown, Tillie, a 38-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined to not only take care of her “babies” but also to prove her own worth.
Elegantly weaving together these, and other, seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory of 9/11 comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty and the tightrope walker’s “artistic crime of the century.” McCann’s most ambitious work to date has already been hailed as an American masterpiece.
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Critical Praise for
Let the Great World Spin
“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, EDITOR OF MCSWEENEY'S AND AUTHOR OF WHAT IS THE WHAT
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"Now I worry about Colum McCann. What is he going to do after this blockbuster groundbreaking, heartbreaking symphony of a novel? No novelist writing of New York has climbed higher, dived deeper.”
— FRANK McCOURT, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF ANGELA’S ASHES AND ’TIS
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“One of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years. . . . Let the Great World Spin is an emotional tour de force.”
— Jonathan Mahler, New York Times Book Review
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Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin is a novel which captures the spirit of an age – 1974, Nixon is about to resign, soldiers are home from Vietnam, the oil crisis is at its peak, and the technology of computers is on the horizon. It is also a reflection of the times we live in now with its...
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