Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin

title: Let the Great World Spin
author: Colum McCann
genre: novel
published: 2010 (paperback)
source: Kankakee Public Library (interlibrary loan), at the long-ago suggestion of my friend Jo
first line: "Those who saw him hushed."
rating: 5/5 stars



This book is remarkable. It's hard to write an original review of a National Book Award-winning book that has been critically lauded by the New York Times Book Review, Dave Eggers, and Frank McCourt, among others. What can I bring to the table, two years after its original release? So this is just my attempt to collect my thoughts. 


First of all, I've never read a novel by Colum McCann before. I think he's a genius. He wrote a post-9/11 novel that is set in 1974. Amazing. So many of the lines in the novel, especially descriptions of the Twin Towers, resonate in a haunting way, even without heavy-handed foreshadowing. Instead, McCann reminds us what New York is, was, and can be in the face of beauty and tragedy.


The organization of the novel is a mosaic of characters, moving through vignettes that eventually all connect. (Strangely, the novel I started immediately after this one, The Imperfectionists, functions in almost the same way.) Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3 are each composed of three stories each, set in 1974, punctuated between books by descriptions of the tightrope walker Phillippe Petit. Book 4 is the only one set after 9/11, and this is the book in which all the characters' stories intertwine. Though the characters range from an Irish monk to Bronx prostitutes to an upper-east side WASP, none of them ring false. McCann brings raw honesty and authenticity to all his characters, and even women narrators read true (something rare in men's writing, in my opinion). 


I unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone. 


Some notable quotes:


"I gave them all of the truth and none of the honesty." (p. 303)


"Recklessness and freedom--how did they become a cocktail?" (p. 263)


"Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter--it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for." (p. 145)