December 9, 2009
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann is a beautiful book of many layers. It is rich in characters, place, and time. The characters include two brothers from Ireland; a mother and daughter both "on the stroll" (prostitutes); two mothers from different worlds but sharing the loss of their sons in Vietnam; and a married couple trying to find salvation through their Art but ignoring it in their lives. The place is the physical spaces of New York and Dublin, and the spiritual spaces of regret and desire, guilt and grief. The time revolves around the year 1974 and the day in August when Philippe Petit stunned the world by walking a high wire he'd secretly deployed between the Twin Towers. By focusing in on one day and revolving his stories around one day, McCann brings home the powerful message that, as Michael Ryan says in his Poem At Thirty, "this day, then, ends....but almost everyone will live through it." Most everyone but not everyone, and it is in the sorrow for who has died, that lives of the living are redefined forever.
Let the Great World Spin is a book about memory and reality, connections and failures, mistakes and redemption. It is a book about life, about human beings trying to do the right thing and follow a good path but struggling, thrown off by poverty, drugs, sorrow, or anger. There are no evil people in this book (although Judge Soderberg, narrow-minded, selfish, and petty in his vindictiveness, comes close) but there is a fallen saint, Corrigan. Corrigan believes in the goodness of everyone but himself, and lives revolve, change, expiate, and expire around him.
McCann folds together the coupled lives and the layers of place and time into a stunning novel about the chance connections of lives, the magnitude of certain moments experienced and remembered, shared or hidden, and the wonder of life's sudden and unexpected offers of possibility, hope, awe, redemption, and grace. Let the Great World Spin is a must-read.
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