Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 March 2019. Plain to see why Colum McCann is so highly rated. He shows us that we can live our lives that way as well. Please try again. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 August 2011. Do you believe that this item violates a copyright? Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Easily readable. Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2018. Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2017. Paperback $11.55 $ 11. His short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar. Or a jumper. McCann has written about New York before, but never quite as piercingly or as provocatively as this. Yet all manage to look up and breathe and be mesmerized even for a brief moment of the occasional glimpse of a good life. McCann's sweeping new novel hinges on Philippe Petit's illicit 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. I really enjoyed this book. Does this book contain quality or formatting issues? All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Mike Peed As the narrator of Colum McCann's new novel sees it, Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974 triggered a quietude generally unknown to New Yorkers. There are some very poignant moments and it does come to a more satisafactory end than I had imagined it might with quite a few twists and unexpected turns along the way. Here, too, are portals onto war, the justice system, and the dawning of the cyber age. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful. McCann's forlorn cast seeks to empower themselves, to swap the muck for the splendor. There’s an Irish monk living in the Bronx projects. He does not duck hard things like racism, violence, drugs and prostitution. It’s the natural, albeit overused, word for what McCann did so well: tell multiple stories about multiple people with multiple themes, focusing on one point-of-view at a time, but with enough overlap to bind them together. But in a moment of unforgettable magic, Philippe Petit stepped out onto an inch-thick wire, 1350 feet above the ground, and walked between the towers. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. A crowd quickly gathered, wondering if he was going to jump. "Those who saw him hushed," McCann writes. A book that will both bury readers in grief and buoy them with hope. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, This title is not currently available for purchase. All with a tinge of sadness or melancholy. Liberty. The city stands still in awe. McCann's reputation is that of a writer's writer, as in. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. When you google “Let the Great World Spin” together with “weave”, you get something like 130,000 hits. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases and classic fiction. Highly recommended. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2011. Worth a read but probably not a good holiday read as too thought provoking for that. Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Try. This is an interesting book based (very loosely) on an actual event ie a man walking a wire between the twin towers when they were newly built. Unabridged; Audible Program Language. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. This was the first book I had read by this author and what a discovery. Let the Great World Spin eBook: McCann, Colum: Amazon.in: Kindle Store. I am very well read and was drawn to this book because it won the National Book Award, a fairly reliable indicator of good literature. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 August 2011. The stories are interweaved so that it is one story, on one day, in one city, and yet it is also a history of the present time. Unable to add item to List. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2013. Something went wrong. Clever, beautifully crafted - intermingled. I might have continued reading, if the author would have let me. Visit his website at www.colummccann.com. There are dozens of intimate tales and threads at the core of Let the Great World Spin. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the … I really don't know what to make of this book, it reads quite disjointedly, but characters keep crossing paths. An incredible read! After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Gloria lives in the same housing project, and she befriends Claire of Park Avenue as they mourn the deaths of their sons in Vietnam. The cast of characters are very varied and not always expecially appealing. On Church Street. This was a true event in the 70s. In "Let the Great World Spin," Petit's stunt acts as a centerline on which McCann hangs the stories of a dozen spiritually disheveled characters, each searching for an alcove of silence in a clamorous city.