If this novel was merely the opening pages, I'd have walked away breathless.
Not sure how I remained breathing through the end.
Collum McCann's Let The Great World Spin is a montage of intertwined storylines against the backdrop of New York, August 1974, when Phillippe Petit tightroped walk between the World Trade Center towers. There are several sections dedicated to the story of Petit and...
more If this novel was merely the opening pages, I'd have walked away breathless.
Not sure how I remained breathing through the end.
Collum McCann's Let The Great World Spin is a montage of intertwined storylines against the backdrop of New York, August 1974, when Phillippe Petit tightroped walk between the World Trade Center towers. There are several sections dedicated to the story of Petit and his walk, and McCann's words can convince you that this was not just a mere reckless stunt of lunacy, but something more. Maybe ego. Maybe art. Maybe something undefinable that stirs in each of us that we reckon with. And sometimes fail.
This historical moment proves a prime prism for the other characters: A Irishman who escapes the terrorism of Ireland, to only find a different sort of siege in the Bronx, where his brother the priest works among the prostitutes while working out the meaning of his calling to a higher order, and of himself; mothers who grieve over sons who died in Vietnam, and wonder if it's enough to bridge their differences, and if it should; prostitutes who try to redefine dignity in a world that both reviles and wants them.
What might trouble one character, troubles all in some form, and it's easy to see how each one fights thru different shades of loneliness, purpose, love, selfishness/selflessness, the world, and him/herself. And the ghost of 9/11/01 certainly haunts the pages. It's hard not to revisit those thoughts and emotions as a reader, and I think it's just another layer that makes this novel resonate even more. Like all great stories, I found myself caring about characters because they made me feel for real strangers I don't know like them. Or my friends like them. Or even me.
I know this is one of those books that will only grow more powerful when I pick it up again. And again. I look forward to when I do.
Excerpt:
"Within seconds he was pureness moving, and he could do anything he liked. He was inside and outside his body at the same time, indulging in what it meant to belong to the air, no future, no past, and this gave him the offhand vault to his walk. He was carrying his life from one side to the other. On the lookout for the moment when he wasn't even aware of his breath.
The core reason for it all was beauty. Walking was a divine delight. Everything was rewritten when he was up in the air. New things were possible with the human form. It went beyond equilibrium. He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake."
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