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Catherine Siemann's Reviews > Let the Great World Spin
Let the Great World Spin
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New York City in 1974 was a run-down, uneasy place, trapped in a spiral of decay. Colum McCann's novel captures the spirit of the place and the people eloquently and movingly, the despair and isolation, the community and the hope. The stories of a disparate group of New Yorkers are linked together by Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers: a monk working among prostitutes in the Bronx; his brother, newly arrived from Dublin; one of the prositutes; a Park Avenue matron (Claire, perhaps named to echo Clarissa Dalloway of whom she reminded me a bit) reaching out uncertainly to other mothers of soldiers killed in Vietnam; her judge husband; and a couple of art world refugees. While a few of the sections (particularly one of computer hackers working on the early Arpanet) are weaker than the others, overall, this beautifully written book was one that I never wanted to end.
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Reading Progress
April 6, 2009
– Shelved
Started Reading
April 18, 2009
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Finished Reading
June 17, 2009
– Shelved as:
2009-favorites
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Lily
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rated it 3 stars
Apr 23, 2014 05:00PM
(Claire, perhaps named to echo Clarissa Dalloway of whom she reminded me a bit) -- Hmmm, Silver in our 21st Century board discussion mentioned her connecting the story to Woolf's story of a party-giver. My thoughts went to Claire Messud, a contemporary of Colum in NYC, an author well-associated with fictional penthouses.
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My reasons for making the Dalloway comparison went beyond the party-giving aspect to other facets of the character. (It's been five years since I read the book, and to fully recreate my line of thought, I'd need to reread!) But as with all intertextuality, both may be -- and almost certainly are -- true at the same time.
Catherine -- since I have fairly recently read both Mrs. Dalloway and LTGWS, I shall give some more thought to your and Silver's comments. (I did not disagree with the possibility of Mrs. Dalloway connections, they just hadn't occurred for me.) Thx.
