This is my second novel by Colum McCann. Set mostly in New York in 1974, with the Vietnam war as its backdrop, a series of characters spin around the tightrope walk of Philippe Petit who managed to break into the Twin Towers, stretch a rope between the two and walk right out over the city.
The different characters all turn around this walk. What was happening as it took place and whether they saw it, and how their lives were somehow linked by that and by a car crash involving an Irish monk and a prostitute who he driving back to the Bronx from jail.
To say too much more about the plot would spoil the novel. What surprised me was how particular to McCann the book felt. Though he’s writing about different characters, McCann has a style that is recognisably his. His imaginative retelling of Philippe Petit’s love of the highwire is probably most moving to me. Perhaps it is no surprise that he reappeared in the other, and later, novel of McCann’s that I read, Apeirogon, set mostly in Israel and Palestine.
Continue reading Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann