Let The Great World Spin
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4.1 • 35 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
One August morning in 1974, a tightrope walker makes his way, through the dawn light, between the World Trade Center towers. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in this stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people. Corrigan, a radical, young Irish monk, struggles with his demons in the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gathers in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who have died in Vietnam. Farther uptown, Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter, determined to take care of her babies and to prove her own worth.
Hailed as an American masterpiece, McCann’s powerful allegory of 9/11 comes alive in the unforgettable voices of these, and other, seemingly disparate characters, drawn together by hope, beauty and the tightrope walker’s “artistic crime of the century.” McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Let the Great World Spin is a triumphant novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCann's sweeping new novel hinges on Philippe Petit's illicit 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. It is the aftermath, in which Petit appears in the courtroom of Judge Solomon Soderberg, that sets events into motion. Solomon, anxious to get to Petit, quickly dispenses with a petty larceny involving mother/daughter hookers Tillie and Jazzlyn Henderson. Jazzlyn is let go, but is killed on the way home in a traffic accident. Also killed is John Corrigan, a priest who was giving her a ride. The other driver, an artist named Blaine, drives away, and the next day his wife, Lara, feeling guilty, tries to check on the victims, leading her to meet John's brother, with whom she'll form an enduring bond. Meanwhile, Solomon's wife, Claire, meets with a group of mothers who have lost sons in Vietnam. One of them, Gloria, lives in the same building where John lived, which is how Claire, taking Gloria home, witnesses a small salvation. McCann's dogged, DeLillo-like ambition to show American magic and dread sometimes comes unfocused John Corrigan in particular never seems real but he succeeds in giving us a high-wire performance of style and heart.
