The many strands of the novel are plaited together when Claire accompanies Gloria back to the South Bronx and two needy children unexpectedly enter the women's lives, allowing them to finally get beyond their own grief. As Philippe Petit managed to cross the divide between the World Trade Center buildings one summer day, these women traverse the great divides of race and class to become friends.

These two women, Claire and Gloria, mirror each other like the twin towers that function as the central image of the book. When the meeting in Claire's Upper East Side penthouse begins to break up, Claire is so desperate for company that she misguidedly offers an African-American woman money to stay, inadvertently treating her like the hired help.

Although we complain about the ongoing gentrification of New York City, McCann reminds us that in 1974, the deteriorating, bankrupt city was a difficult place to live.īooks McCann, Stiles Win National Book AwardsĬlaire has joined an unlikely support group of mourning mothers from Staten Island and the Bronx but they might as well be from a different planet. If at first I feared that McCann's prismatic approach to New York would be dutifully multicultural, I came away dazzled by his ability to capture the voices of uptown and downtown: the prostitutes, immigrants, socialites and aspiring artists. in years,' you must read this book.īy focusing the book and its characters through a single summer's day in 1974, the day a French tightrope-walker crossed a wire suspended between the World Trade Center buildings, the Irish writer Colum McCann offers us a glimpse into our collective past. Despite the fact that The New York Times called it 'one of the most electric, profound novels. Don't let the awards and rave reviews put you off. To this day, we haven't seen the film.įortunately I read Let The Great World Spin before I grew tired of seeing the book on the 'staff pick' shelves. The critics had raved about the movie, two fine actors appeared in it, and yet at a certain point, because the critics had raved about it, seeing the movie had turned into a duty rather than a pleasure. Back in the days before Netflix, every time my husband and I walked into a video store, The Shawshank Redemption would be staring us in the face.

Book let the great world spin