Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
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A death-defying feat of literary daring
Colum McCann’s death-defying feat of literary daring is set on August 7, 1974, the day a French high-wire artist walks a cable precisely strung between the towers of the World Trade Center. Below, going about their lives, are a radical Irish monk living in the Bronx projects and his brother, a newly-minted immigrant; a Guatemalan nurse in love with the monk; a Park Avenue mother grieving the loss of her son in Vietnam and her husband, an emotionally restrained judge; a 38-year-old grandmother and her daughter, both prostitutes; and an artist in town on a drug bender. Even though most of the characters don’t witness the event firsthand, the day of the walk is a fateful one for all of them. A non-linear narrative unfolds, each chapter homing in on a different character, with McCann assuming the voice or perspectives of each — including, in a fascinating central interlude, the wirewalker himself. With no unifying conflict, the momentum of this novel comes from a snowballing effect linking these disparate people and their individual struggles. The reader’s vantage point on the post-9/11 side of history brings an elegiac clarity to this sweeping, lyrical novel of loss. Meanwhile, McCann’s high-wire artist, based on the real-life Phillippe Petit, dances above.
