Let The Great World Spin
By Colum Mccann
★★★★★★★★★½ 9.5/10
349 pages
What’s it about?
Colum McCann writes a novel of beautifully interwoven stories. The first story begins in 1974 with the sighting of a tightrope walker balancing on a wire between the two twin towers. All the stories weave together to show a world that is both harsh and achingly beautiful.
What did it make me think about?
This is truly a well crafted book. The writing is great, but the plots of each individual story were equally engaging.
Should I read it?
Yes! Be warned though- this is a book that may seem disjointed at first. Patience pays off. The book just keeps getting better and better. The last few stories are the reward for your patience.
A passage I marked
What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth- the filth, the war, the poverty, was that life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn't interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heaven. To him that was a dressing room for hell. Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it. Out of that came some sort of triumph that went beyond theological proof, a cause for optimism against all evidence.
