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Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann List Price: $25.00 Price: $16.50 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. You Save: $8.50 (34%)

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later. You might find yourself paused, considering the universe of lives one city contains in any slice of time, each of us a singular world, sometimes passing close enough to touch or collide, to birth a new generation or kill it, sending out ripples, leaving residue, an imprint, marking each other, our city, the very air--compassionately or callously, unable to see all the damage we do or heal. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful.

But then someone does something extraordinary, like dancing on a cable strung 110 stories in the air, or imagining a magnificent novel that lifts us up for a sky-scraping, dizzy glimpse of something greater: the sordid grandeur of this whirling world, "bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants." --Mari Malcolm

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.

Trust me, this is the sort of book that you will take off your shelf over and over again as the years go along. It’s a story of the early 1970s, but it’s also the story of our present times. And it is, in many ways, a story of a moment of lasting redemption even in the face of all the evidence.

There are dozens of intimate tales and threads at the core of Let the Great World Spin. On one level there’s the tightrope walker making his way across the World Trade Center towers. But as the novel goes along the “walker” becomes less and less of a focal point and we begin to care more about the people down below, on the pavement, in the ordinary throes of their existence. There’s an Irish monk living in the Bronx projects. There’s a Park Avenue mother in mourning for her dead son, who was blown up in the cafés of Saigon. There are the original computer hackers who "visit" New York in an early echo of the Internet. There’s an artist who has learn to return to the simplicity of love. And then--in possibly the book’s wildest and most ambitious section--there’s a Bronx hooker who has brought up her children in “the house that horse built”--“horse” of course being the heroin that was ubiquitous in the '70s.

All the voices feel realized and authentic and the writing floats along. This was my city back then--and now. McCann has written about New York before, but never quite as piercingly or as provocatively as this. This is fiction that gets the heart thumping.

The stories are interweaved so that it is one story, on one day, in one city, and yet it is also a history of the present time. In Let the Great World Spin, you can’t ignore the overtones for today: suffice it to say that the novel is held together by an act of redemption and beauty. I didn’t want to stop turning the pages.

I’m really not sure what McCann will do after this, but this is a great New York book, not just for New Yorkers but for anyone who walks any sort of tightrope at all. And yes, it doesn’t surprise me that it takes an Irishman to capture the heart of the city... --Frank McCourt

Customer Reviews:
No Prize from Me	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
From an interview with Colum McCann in the back of the book, it seems like he's quite a decent fellow, so I'll raise a toast to him. (I've also enjoyed some of his earlier work.) And the characters in this novel are certainly decent also: despite their quirks and weaknesses, it's hard not to root for every one of them. But I'm afraid that my best wishes for both the author and his characters don't help my response to the book itself--which is, to put it simply, that I found it boring. I honestly had to work and work to finish this novel. I won't rehearse the plot of the book since you can find it in other reviews, but I think the conception (imagining the day of Philippe Petit's walk between the towers) was fantastic. The characters, as noted above, cry out for our sympathy. The ending is sweet. But somehow the whole piece, the way it tries to show the "two degrees of separation" that hold together a city, never holds together itself. In trying to manipulate the characters and their relationships through the complexity of their lives and this particular day, the novel feels more arranged than heartfelt: characters seem to have functions in a plot rather than lives in our imaginations. Scenes end up sounding like "set pieces," where the prose sounds self-involved and the characters consequently artificial. Some tumble into stereotypes, and others seem less than complete (e.g., one character is said to belong to a religious organization simply referred to as the "Order," as if this were a Dan Brown novel. Religious orders have particular names and identities, even if imaginary ones, so why not fill us in on this?). The shadow of the Twin Towers haunts this book, but the poignancy of this real event isn't enough to sustain a poignancy in the book's imagined ones.
Courage Uner Fire	Customer Rating: 1 out of 5
This was, by far, not the worst book I've ever read, but it comes close. All the "tricky" devices the author uses, like 1rst person, present tense, etc. are all ineffective. The author doesn't choose to let the reader in on on what he's getting at, until much later in the book. As a reader I felt manipulated and disrespected, having to plow through so much bad writing to reach the conclusion that there wasn't much substance to begin with. Any writing book will tell you to avoid the devices this author uses constantly. My question is: Just because the author has been published before, does he not have a content editor? The characters are not interesting, maintly because of the writing style. There is nothing to draw the reader in from the first paragraph. I find it quite amazing that this book would become a best seller, or even that a publisher would look twice at this manuscript.
Very Uneven	Customer Rating: 2 out of 5
I anticipated that this book would be excellent, based on reviews. However; I was badly disapointed. Some of the short stories were interesting, but, most were based too much on the characters introspection and thoughts with very little real story. Jack Bryan
A Dizzying Masterpiece	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
When books consistently change perspective, it can be annoying. Just as you get involved with some characters, a new chapter starts and you are supposed to start caring about some unfamiliar people and situations. However, when the author is a master of voice, like in this case with Colum McCann, you don't care. You go along with anyone he wants to introduce you to, and it takes about a page before you are immersed in the new perspective. Let the Great World Spin keeps things popping. You get to meet a myriad of sharply drawn, distinct characters-- from Jazz a hooker "on the stroll" in the Bronx, to the judge who sentenced Philip Petit, to Corrigan (the most wonderful character of all-- an Irish immigrant attempting to fulfill a spiritual calling in the slums of NYC)-- and observe the overlap and interconnectedness of human experience. The shifts happen quickly and the story never drags. It is also a period piece. You live and breath New York City in the early seventies which is a pretty interesting time and place to visit-- the graffiti writers, the drug use, the Vietnam hangover, the postmodern artists. The storytelling had that edgy dirtiness that I like, but is also touching and brings you to deeper themes about human frailty and the layered quality of our experiences. It resonates after you are done reading it like all great books do.
Relieved to see that I was not the only one who didn't like this book. . .	Customer Rating: 2 out of 5
This book was assigned for our most recent Book Club. I was looking forward to reading it and started in a most positive frame of mind; but I found it boring and annoying and got tired. Of this kind. Of writing. With details. And more details. That may. Or may not. Be appropriate. Or relevant. For the story I checked the Amazon reviews to see if ANYONE shared my opinion -- and was glad to discover that a few did.