Legit Lit: Let the Great World Spin

To me, the mark of a great book is one I think of often after I finish it. I've read plenty of books that do not immediately strike me as being great only to find myself that little things in my daily life trigger reflections about their plots, characters, and themes for months or even years afterward. I knew that Colum McCann's spectacular Let the Great World Spin was wonderful while I was reading it. But only now, having finished it a year and a half ago, am I aware of just how wonderful. 


Jonathan Mahler, reviewer for The New York Times, calls McCann's spectacular book "one of the most electric, profound novels I've read in years." His reasons are probably different from mine, in part because his review appeared shortly after the book was released and he didn't have the time to let it marinate the way I have. But both of us recognized the gem we held in our hands immediately. The story begins in Ireland but moves quickly to New York in the 1970s as it follows two emigrees, brothers, who set up vastly different lives here; one becomes a bartender and the other eccentric, infinitely loving priest who ministers to prostitutes and other residents of a housing project and, for all his naïveté, may be the wisest character I've encountered in a while. (Isn't that always the way?) As the story unfolds, more and more characters are introduced, all united, however peripherally, by the real-life bravado of tightrope walker Phillipe Petit, who once danced on a wire strung between the towers of the World Trade Center. (While it is this wire that binds them all together, Petit's act does not have a central role in the book.) Some of the characters reappear throughout the novel, and some make only a brief appearance, but even the most minor are imbued with depth and vividness that makes them all feel deliciously as though they stepped out of their real lives to flit momentarily into the plot before rejoining their separate existences again. 


The books is filled with fascinating juxtapositions. The dichotomy between inseparable opposites is established early with the two Irish brothers, Ciaran and Corrigan, and continues throughout. One of the characters is a judge who doles out justice to the very people Corrigan, the priest, tries to save. His wife is a member of a small circle of mothers, different in every way but for the grief that binds them after losing sons in Vietnam. And, as the book is a contemporary work, the grimy picture it paints of what I consider today to be a luminous city, one in which the twin towers are nothing but a haunting memory, creates yet another poignant pairing. 


Let the Great World Spin is at once heartbreaking and uplifting. It will stay with you, and you'll be happier for it. You must read this book.