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    Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
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    Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
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    Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
    Audiobook15 hours

    Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

    Written by Colum McCann

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Colum McCann's beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit's daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

    In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

    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.

    Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century."

    A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

    Praise for Let the Great World Spin

    "This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it's a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There's so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed."-Dave Eggers

    "Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It's a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it's a novel about families-the ones we're born into and the ones we make for ourselves."-USA Today

    "The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air."-Esquire

    "Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCann's marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down."-The Seattle Times

    "Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCann's heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow."-Entertainment Weekly

    "An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall."-O: The Oprah Magazine


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 16, 2015
    ISBN9781101922637
    Unavailable
    Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
    Author

    Colum McCann

    Colum McCann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories and two works of non-fiction. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honours, including the U.S National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the President and co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organisation, Narrative 4. He is the Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence in Hunter College, in New York, where he lives with his wife Allison and their family. His most recent novel, Apeirogon, became an immediate New York Times bestseller and won several major international awards. His first major non-fiction book, American Mother, will be published in February 2024. www.colummccann.com

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    Reviews for Let the Great World Spin

    4/5

    1,861 ratings194 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I felt this one was lacking, sure, a relief was created against Ulysses and The Instructions; that said, I felt the characters cheap and cloying the story a sigh of history.
    • 5/5
      Priests and prostitutes, junkies and judges - all human life is here. A fine novel that uses multiple points of view tell a story of New York in 1974 that reflects New York post 9/11. I'm not entirely sure what Philipp Petit's tightrope walk between the towers is supposed to represent, but somehow it stands for freedom, bravery, living your life your way and everything else important. Outstanding.
    • 4/5
      I could re-read this book and maybe enjoy it more the second time. It took some time for me to appreciate the way the book was structured. The writing style is understated. It wasn't until I was 2/3 of the way through the I really started to appreciate the depth of the book.
    • 5/5
      Finally, a book with interconnected characters that is well written and that works! Great stories that combine to tell a beautiful story. Fascinating characters I loved and wanted to follow.
    • 3/5
      Very sweet in place, but the strands seemed utterly disconnected. More like a series of short stories. In addition, given that Petit had the whole city transfixed its scope seems surprisingly narrow.
    • 4/5
      And another half star. I saw the 'Man on Wire' documentary before the 2001 Twin Towers attack and was already entranced. I guess from the acknowledgements that the author put a great deal of work into the content and construction of this book - and it shows in the best way possible - it seems so natural and effortless, almost as if he gave it a start and then it wrote itself. Written 35 years after Philippe Petit walked the wire it opens my eyes to the great differences - my world of 1974 with today and my world with New York then. And how extraordinary people are - any chance person you meet will have such a complex history, family, future.
    • 4/5
      An ambitious and complex novel set in New York in 1974. Each chapter tells the story of a different character, and it gradually becomes clear that they are much more linked than seems the case early on. McCann's characters are rounded and sympathetic, covering a wide cross section of New York society. The central inspiration is Philippe Petit's high wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Centre, and his story has a symbolic resonance that links the remaining tales of survival. If I have a slight criticism it is that the last chapter, set in 2006, ties up the loose ends a little too neatly, but overall this was a very rewarding read.
    • 5/5
      Marvellous weaving of stories.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed some of the stories in the book, especially in the first half (Claire, Corrigan, Petit's training story). I also liked the idea that they all involved the tightrope walker in some way, even peripherally.

      Some of the stories I found flawed. The one about the judge (wanted to do good, but now feels like a paper pusher) and especially the one about the prostitute (life has been tough, but she is smarter than she looks!) especially one dimensional. I think the trouble with short character pieces is that you run into trouble if you try to share everything about their emotions and lives in such a short space, which he did with these two.

      Not sure if I will read anything else by him. But it would also be interesting to see him progress as a writer, since this had a lot of great stuff and a lot of promise .
    • 4/5
      Another great book by Colum McCann, who is becoming one of my favourite writers. He is able to weave together different stories to bring about a whole, deep tapestry of the place and time he is portraying. I loved it!
    • 4/5
      This was my first read of 2016 that was really hard for me to get into! The first chapters were so disconnected from each other that it felt more like a book of short stories I was reading than a novel, and I'm not a short story fan at all so it was a real struggle. It wasn't until maybe 200 pages in that I really felt like I was seeing a full picture rather than just a lot of scattered starts and stops. That said, the last few chapters were so beautiful they made the first 8+ worth it. I'm glad I read this book.
    • 5/5
      A work of art awaiting the title of 'Timeless' from a future generation of discoverers.
    • 5/5
      I'm completely enamored of this book. Been a Colum McCann fan for a while. He is truly great.
      What I love the most about McCann is the sympathetic, loving voice with which he writes all of his characters. He is completely without judgment and, in reading him, we learn to view the world through his eyes. This, I think, is the greatest and most important role of art, no?
      From an aesthetic standpoint, McCann writes in a beautiful, lilting prose, capturing several different voices in this novel (including a very Joycean chapter) and making them all believable.
      I was sad when this book was finished! I wanted it to continue for ever.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the idea and the interconnectedness of the characters...but there was just something about it that I didn't love. Thus the 3-star rating.
    • 5/5
      As I opened this book a few nights ago, my wife (who really liked it) said, "There isn't really closure in this novel", speaking of the stories of each character. But in a subtle way, there is a great deal of closure as the final section seems to me to offer a hopeful flowering of many of the relationships which evolve throughout the novel. This is also an epic poem about interconnectedness, loss, hope and love. The opening sections deal with death, addiction and despair, and the novel returns to these, but it ends as a hopeful elegy.
    • 5/5
      Perhaps THE best book I've read in the past year. A number of stories intertwine in August of 1974, playing off Philippe Petit's famous outlaw wirewalk on a cable stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The important theme of this book is not that things end, but that things go on. Maybe our lives are like threads a couple of feet long twined into a much longer rope, tied to a chain, attached to a 250-foot length of 450 lb. cable, enabling a stunt that immortalizes a man, a structure, a city, a civilization. Sometimes when we think that our story is over, it turns out it's only a prelude of a much larger story, which itself spins into an even larger one. Maybe in that context, we're all immortal. McCann's mastery of the different characters' unique voices is impeccable. I particularly loved the part centering on Tillie, the Bronx hooker, and the descriptions of Petit's preparations for his magnificent stunt. But all the characters, however high or low in the social strata, or however exasperating, are understandable and even lovable when you see the world through their eyes.
    • 4/5
      I usually don't like short stories because I end up wanting to know more and feeling like I'm being cheated. This was a wonderful exception because of the way the stories all revolve around each other and sort of interconnect without each one knowing, and it was just enough.

      I liked Tillie's chapter best. This is one of her quotes: "When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve, Eve I'm leaving you, honey, and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you're one lucky motherfucker."

      How can you not love that.
    • 4/5
      I never would have picked up this book if it had not been a book club selection. And I certainly wouldn't have finished it! The book is made up of a series of interconnected chapters, all connected to the man who walked between the two towers. I thoroughly disliked the first chapter (which was quite long!) but once I got past that story I really enjoyed the book.
    • 3/5
      After all the hype, this wasn't as amazing as I expected, but it was still quite good. McCann seems to write particularly well from the point of view of women, and many of the chapters were very strong on their own (Adelita's after the crash ... gorgeous). The overall effect, however, wasn't as much of a crescendo as I'd hoped. For a more powerful novel-in-stories type read, try OLIVE KITTERIDGE.
    • 4/5
      A great book. At first glance it seems like a collection of unrelated stories centered around a certain time period, but as the book progresses, connections emerge. As we learn more about the characters and their connections to each other, we gain a deeper understanding of each character and what drives them.

      Let the Great World Spin is an engrossing and inspiring novel.
    • 4/5

      This is really more like a 4 1/2 star novel. Colum McCann took a true historical event with Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers in NYC on August 7, 1974 and built characters around this all connected by this one event but seemingly unrelated to the actual man who did it. At first also, the characters seem unrelated to eachother but McCann is really adept at connecting them and helping you see a variety of perspectives, sometimes on the same topic or event because of this writing device. In many ways, however, these chapters could function as their own stand alone stories or vignettes about this event, too, which makes them really interesting.

      I have to admit, some of these characters really got to me, especially the Irish priest who leaves Ireland at a long age to help out a bunch of NYC prostitutes. There's a curious and acute cross cultural sort of awareness going on here that sets this novel apart from many others and they each have their own distinctive voice when the narration switches to them across the chapters. It's amazing so many different people could meet and be so tied to one event but then again, it's NYC and that sort of thing seems like it happens all of the time.


      pg. 29-30 "It's about fear. You know? They're all throbbing with fear. We all are...Bits of it floating in the air," he said, "It's like dust. You walk about and don't see it, don't notice it, bit it's there and it's all coming down, covering everything. You're breathing it in. You touch it. You drink it. You eat it. But it's so fine you don't notice it. But you're covered in it. It's everywhere. What I mean is, we're afraid. Just stand still for an instant and there it is, this fear, covering our faces and our tongues. If we stopped to take account of it, we'd just fall into despair. But we can't stop. We've got to keep going."


      pg. 32 "I fooled myself into thinking I'd some poems in me while I was in Dublin. It was like hanging old clothes out to dry. Everyone in Dublin was a poet, maybe even the bombers who'd treated us us to their afternoon of delight."

      pg. 68 "Perhaps its chance. Or perhaps chance is just another way to convince ourselves that we are valuable."

      pg. 72 "The doctor came in, clipboard to his chest. He spoke quietly, of internal injuries. A whole new language of trauma."

      pg. 76 "We find, as in old jewelery, the gone days of our lives."

      ...

      "She felt like her mouth was made of chalk. Almost swallowed it as she spoke. Like an apology."

      pg. 85 "The first star in the morning is the last one at night."

      pg. 115 "Being inside the car, when it clipped the back of the van, was like being in a body we didn't know. The picture we refuse to see of ourselves. That is not me, that must be somebody else."

      pg. 128 "She usually wore her weariness like an autograph..."

      pg. 230 "At the end of the world they're going to have cockroaches and Barry Manilow records."

      pg. 333 "Afterward, Gloria said to her that it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise."




    • 4/5
      In 1974, Philippe Petit walked out between the towers of the World Trade Center with nothing to keep him from falling but the cable beneath his feet. He ran, danced, and even lay down on the wire. He was up there for 45 minutes. And the world watched, holding its breath.

      Colum McCann highlights Petit's famous stunt in his latest novel Let the Great World Spin. In the shadow of the tightrope walker, various lives intersect in the streets of New York City. They include an artist strung out on cocaine, an Irish missionary, a slew of prostitutes, a grieving Park Avenue mother, among others. Moving back and forth from one character's first-person perspective to another's, McCann effectively nails each voice making up for any confusion the frequent switching causes. With such a great cast and strong voice, it is unfortunate that the novel is split between so many characters, leaving each sorely undeveloped. These characters deserve a full-length novel of their own.

      Overall, the story is written well, although some of the subplots have little to do with the main story. In the end, I was left scratching my scalp wondering why McCann felt the need to include certain characters (i.e. the grafitti photographer, the California programmers). I kept hoping for a punch which tied them all together, but was left with none.

      From this one work, I can tell that McCann is a great storyteller and master of creating an interesting character. If one can look past the thin wire holding these stories together, and focus instead on the artist dancing on the line, then one should be able to find enjoyment in Let the Great World Spin.
    • 5/5
      I usually don't like it when authors switch perspectives from chapter to chapter and tie a lot of different stories together, but Colum McCann does this so expertly in this book that I just couldn't help but love it. Truly amazing read.
    • 5/5
      With such mixed reviews, I was a little reluctant to pick this book up, but so glad I did. It is now one of my new favorites (of all times). I think I just resonated with McCann's writing style and journey into the hearts and minds of characters probably very unlike himself. I don't think it always succeeds, I mean, sometimes I felt like he was guessing about things (life as a prostitute in 1973, for instance). But that said, he handles his characters with such reverence and respect, it was hard not to like the way he did it. I loved the author's choices on surprising compositions of his characters, like the obese African-American woman Gloria, who loves opera at the Met, and much to her chagrin, time and time again everyone assumes she is a "Southern church lady" (she is no fan of the church); or Corrigan, who everyone first assumes in a strung out Irish drunk, but in fact, is a struggling monk and helper to all people. It is these unlikely insights into humanity that makes this novel such a joy to read. Time and time again, despite struggle, there are little glimpses of what makes us all shine, and this world a beautiful place. So even amidst death and war (Vietnam), there is hope. But mostly, I just sank deeply into the world McCann created through these very different characters, and a time and place I just only vaguely remember (I was a small kid then); and I loved the structure, loosely linked stories, and how the characters came together in small but important ways. This is my favorite novel in a long time. Maybe not for everyone, but I sure loved it and highly recommend it.
    • 3/5
      I should probably swear off of award winning books, at least lately. And I'm going to have to start skipping book club when they choose to read an award winner although in all fairness, this particular book was chosen long ago and I could never find the impetus to finish it until recently. Suffice it to say it's never a good sign when books take up extended residence on my bedside table. Although this National Book Award winner by Colum McCann is well written, this collection of inter-related stories tenuously connected by the spectacular 1974 Philippe Petit tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center left me unsatisfied.The short stories focus on one day in the lives of very disparate characters. There's a Park Avenue matron hosting a meeting for her grief support group for mothers who lost sons in Vietnam, a celibate Irish monk living and working amongst the poor and drug addicted, the monk's brother, mother and daughter prostitutes, the judge who will preside over Philippe Petit's trial, and a counter-culture artist and his wife. The stories visit the characters on the day of the tightrope walk but also fills in each person's personal back history as well. Even so, some of the characters feel incomplete and one dimensional. Characters drive the slowly unfolding novel rather than the singular event that threads through each of the narratives. And as is often the case in purely character driven novels, the characters are incredibly introspective, perhaps too much so in the cases when their actions already telegraph their thoughts. In the end, the actual tightrope walk, although a true event, became inconsequential and simply a narrative technique to tie these people together in ways that end up being far closer than the reader first suspects. It took me a very long time to slog through the book because I just didn't really engage with any of the characters. McCann's writing may be techniquely well done but there was a cold, flat distance to it that held this reader at a remove. We might be on the ground looking up at the magic happening high above us in the air but we're too far away to actually feel any of the magic.
    • 3/5
      Didn't live up to the hype for me.
    • 1/5
      couldnt finish it too depressing
    • 3/5
      Very well written and with a great sense of character and place and yet it gives me some problems. The books purports to be a slice of New York life in 1974 loosely connected by Phillipe Petit's tightrope walk between the World Trade Center Towers. But while the passages about Petit are among some of the most lyrical and beautiful in the book the connection seems contrived and of little relevance to what is happening in the rest of the book. Most of stories in the book center around or are connected to a group of black hookers in the Bronx. They are suitably depressing. Even a story of high society is concerned with the death of a son in Vietnam. I didn't arrive in New York City until a decade later and there were still seedy areas, Alphabet City and pre-Disney Times Square to name but two. But there was a vivacity about it all that seems lacking in the book. Joe Papp was dominating Off-Broadway, A Chorus Line was a year from opening, Ellen Stewart had founded La Mama and Miguel Algarin the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In Music CBGBs was founded in 1973 , the Ramones kicked off in 1974.There was a lot happening in NYC in 1974. There was a lot of life. Unfortunately not much of it appears in this book.
    • 3/5
      Let the Great World Spin is a story about several characters, all linked to one or more of the others. I found some stories quite engaging, but there were also stories which did not grip me at all. I don't know if it's thw writing style of these parts or if it's just a personal thing though. I would recommend trying this book if its description appeals to you, because it may be worth it for you.
    • 5/5
      Yes," the characters did seem to walk off the page" as another reviewer wrote. I thoroughly enjoyed the interlocking stories and the beautiful writing. I've resolved to read more of his books.