Rated Let the Great World Spin 10/10
This book is well worth the time, cover price, and its National Book Award. Circling around Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers, McCann weaves together the fragile connections between eleven New Yorkers. It is both a story of its time and a thoughtful 9/11 allegory in which grief, passion, and observance are at the root of every character.<br><br>I read a lot of great books this year, but only a few did I know I would love from the first page, more than one set in New York City. Maybe at times sulking naysayers like to disparage the “New York Novel,” claiming that it’s all been done before, but I don’t know how anyone could reasonably believe that. In the United States’ most populous city, how could you possibly think that every story has been told? When the world is filled with short story collections depicting the most microscopic of events in two-bar towns, how is the expanse of five boroughs and 8.4 million people “overrated?” How is it any less real?<br><br>If anything, Let The Great World Spin is an antidote to that kind of contrary thinking. Whether or not we know it consciously, we are all connected. We share the same air — spouses, subway riders, café frequenters, best friends, and drunks — and somewhere there is a common thread. For as big as the world is, sometimes it doesn’t take much bring us together.<br><br>(Full review can be found on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/12/let-great-world-spin-by-colum-mccann.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)