Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House, 2009)
This 
wonderful book was recommended to me by an avid reader, friend of Lemuria, and a resident of New York City—transplanted from his roots in Mississippi. He never steers me wrong, so once again a great read which I am passing on to all of you.
On August 7, 1974 while Philippe Petit walked (danced, leapt) on a tightrope wire between the World Trade Center towers–called the “artistic crime of the century”–way up there, ¼ mile, if you can imagine, anonymous, ordinary lives were being lived out on the streets below. If you think of it, one can imagine—an angel in the sky looking over the depths of a city.
The story is not about the tightrope walk but what was happening below as he “walked, danced” over the city. A few of these ordinary lives become interwoven as McCann paints in absolutely beautiful language a portrait of a city and its people.
Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk with issues of his own stemming from a troubled childhood, lives among the prostitutes on the streets of the Bronx. He provides a place for these women to come when they must: his apartment, open all of the time. His life is interwoven with Tillie, a thirty-eight year old hooker, her daughter, Jazzlyn–also a hooker, and Jazlyn’s two babies. Tillie loves those babies, even from a jail cell where she finds herself after a “trick” turned bad, and worries over their care.
There is a young artist and her husband who, while driving home, sideswipe a car on the freeway causing it to spin out of control. It is obvious that the passengers are injured, but her husband, having just finished a joint, does not stop to assist and take responsibility. She cannot get the passengers out of her mind, and eventually goes to the hospital where the passengers were taken as her own life spirals out of control.
In 1974 our young soldiers were coming home from Vietnam, some in caskets. In a Park Avenue apartment a group of mothers mourn their sons who have died in this war. These mothers from diverse backgrounds try in vain to find commonality but way too much divides them even in their grief.
And so the walk continues. People notice. One of the grieving mothers thinks he might be an angel, her son—returned. Stories of these seemingly disparate lives become intertwined. As I said, it is written beautifully with McCann using language, sentence structure, repetition, to bring to life this story and its characters. I recommend it to you with enthusiasm!
-Yvonne
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