Reading List: Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann

Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end I decided to go with a book I managed to pick up at my former job working at a bookstore that I have always wanted to read: Colum McCann’s 2009 National Book Award winning Let the Great World Spin.

This novel was a great read for many reasons, not least of which would be McCann’s ineffable ability to tell a stunning yarn narrated by so many different people. The story revolves around New York in the 1970’s and an event that really happened: a man named Philippe did spread a wire between the twin towers and tightrope-walked across it in 1974. The entire novel circulates around this event and we are introduced to two of the main characters, Corrigan and Ciaran, in the second chapter. Corrigan is very devoted to the Order, a religious organization that demands his entire life. Ciaran is visiting him from Ireland after having grown up with his brother there. There is a burst of tragedy involving two other main characters and a freeway after Corrigan is driving some prostitutes home from court after being arrested, and we lose one of the main characters just like that.

The rest of the novel delves into various themes: personal familial loss during the Vietnam War, artists trying to find inspiration in the dirty seventies New York and instead locating parties and drugs, the life of a prostitute on those same mean streets and how she survives, as well as other themes like graffiti and whether or not it should be considered art. We meet Claire and Solomon, parents of a young boy who goes to Southeast Asia on a mission to count the war dead, and we meet Lara and Blaine, the artists who have swore off the bad life and moved to a remote cabin in upstate New York, and we delve into the life of Adelita, the young nurse who falls into Corrigan’s life and turns it upside down.

As stated this was one of the best books I have encountered in a long while, mostly due to the masterful way in which McCann weaves the rich tapestries of each individual live into something that is more than its parts, but also somewhat due to the narrative framing device of the tightrope walker. Most characters have something to gain and to profoundly lose, and are hoping for a better future for their children, but are not always granted it. In a very moving section towards the end we see one of Claire’s friends in loss, Gloria, adopt the very children of the prostitute that died in the before-mentioned car crash, and one of those children gets to narrate her own part of the work in returning to New York to see the dying Claire. It’s an amazing ending to a quite remarkable collection of stories and helps wrap them all up.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great New York narrative (one before I read it I thought pertained to 9/11 and the WTC, but that horrible event looms silently in the future of most of these tales) from the seventies that also ties together many different characters and settings into one fantastic novel. Thanks for joining me along this reading adventure.​