Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
number of voters: 8
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 8.75
lowest rating: 3.5
average rating: 5.84
average star rating: 2.5 stars
*****
A man suspends a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers. For 45 breathtaking, spectacular minutes he walks, runs, even dances on a ¾-inch wire 110 stories up in the air. Below him, a city inhales, exhales.
Colum McCann captures it. Like a snapshot of one ordinary yet historic day, Let the Great World Spin suspends itself across the wire of your imagination and burns the imprint into your mind.
It’s New York, 1974, and you are there! You know these people, these average yet inimitable brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, wives, husbands. They are so vividly drawn you can almost touch them.
A fascinating concept with an attention grabbing opening plus a tangle of unforgettable characters written exquisitely by an informed author should equal a satisfied reader. But that’s not to see we enjoyed it. Unforgettable does not mean likable, and these characters are so raw that McCann risks losing his audience to indifference. These are not fairytale protagonists, and it’s sometimes difficult to care where the story might take them.
Yet Let the Great World Spin is not so much a story as it is an experience. You could know every plot point in this book and it would not spoil the reading of it. McCann has such a commanding grasp on the use of language to convey tangible, vivacious, squalid life that you are drawn into his world to the very end.
Let the Great World Spin is a work of art. You might not like it, you might not hang it above the mantle, but if you take the time you might appreciate it as a masterpiece.
