Let the Great World Spin

NPR posted this piece about Let the Great World Spin yesterday, and I could relate to the author's occasional hesitancy to read a book with such critical acclaim and rave reviews (although it's hard to pass up books that win the National Book Award). Sometimes those books stay on my TBR pile for a long, long time, even though I want to read them. The contrarian in me is thinking, Stop telling me to read that! Jeez. I'll get to it on my own time. Although, I'd wanted to read this specific book ever since watching the documentary Man On Wire, about the French guy who walked a tightrope across the Twin Towers in 1974. (Seriously, he did that. I get vertigo just from thinking about the view.)

But like the author of that article, I'm so glad I picked Let the Great World Spin off my shelf. The NYT Book Review called it, "An emotional tour de force . . . one of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years." Yup. Agreed.

It is August, 1974, and a tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter-mile in the sky. In the streets below, ordinary lives become extraordinary as award-winning novelist Colum McCann crafts this stunningly realized portrait of a city and its people. From Colum McCann's website

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out the "level of human detail almost brutal in its empathy." I couldn't agree more with that statement. This is a book that will not only break your heart on every page but sew it back together. Each time Colum McCann introduces a new narrative voice I think I won't care for it as much as the last, and each time I'm wrong.

It's just fantastic literature. I'll leave you with one of my favorite passages:
It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from. We bring home with us when we leave. Sometimes it becomes more acute for the fact of having left.

Tweet