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This is Colum McCann’s fourth novel and after receiving numerous international awards, ‘Let the Great World Spin’ landed him the National Book Award 2009.

Essentially this book is a 21st century version of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Just as the Ulysses tells the story of Dublin on Bloomsday (16th June 1904) ‘Let the Great World Spin’ tells the events of New York on the 7th August 1974 when a tightrope walker walked, 110 stories above ground, between the newly build Twin Towers of the Trade Centre. The book takes the point of view of various characters, who met, died, lost, found, travelled, judged and took pictures that day. 

Each chapter is in fact a short story in its own right, not unlike Ulysses, which was originally published in independent chapters. The narrative is skillfully twisted and plotted into a full-length novel. This book is not only a tribute to Joyce, but also to the Trade Centre, Vietnam, creativity and the 70s, the era of shifting values. The stories are very engaging, urgent and vivid. The coincidences and events come about in a very natural manner and weave a fabric of what happened on that hot summer’s day with neat insertions of forward and back flashes. 

It seems that on the day the tightrope walker crossed the 200 meters between the towers as contradictions and chasms were knitted together. Characters are indefinitely transformed, for better or worse, by each other’s company. The main thread of the novel is actually based a real event, the tightrope walk of Philip Petit, while all the other characters and occurrences are fictional.

I am sorry to say that McCann’s novel is by far more readable than Joyce’s epic. In fact you will find you won’t be able to put the book down, as you want to find out how it all ends. It is written in a sound naturalistic style but holds a beautiful and lyrical note throughout. It is a moving but never sentimental even though it potentially could have been.

Other books by McCann include Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, Songdog and Fishing the Sloe-Black River. He has, over the years; won various international prices like the Rooney Prize and Pushcard Prize etc. and was short-listed for an Oscar for the story ‘Everything in this Country Must’ which was turned into a film. McCann’s work has been translated into thirty languages but I trust that it will always maintain an Irish accent.

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin, Random House 2009 £11.99

For free, downloadable sample check colummccann.com

Valeria Melchioretto