Let the Great World Spin

Set in New York City in 1974 against the backdrop of Philippe Petit’s infamous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, Colum McCann’s National Book Award Winner explores the intertwined lives of more than a half-dozen characters. Corrigan, an idealistic Irish priest, lives in poverty and provides shelter for prostitutes while his pragmatic brother Ciaran tries to get him to go back to the old country. One of those prostitutes, Tillie, struggles to be a mother (and grandmother) despite the demands of the street life. Conservative, Jewish Judge Soderbergh, who sentences Tillie to prison, mourns the death of his son, while his high-strung WASP wife, Claire, forges an unexpected friendship with Gloria, a black woman with her own personal tragedies.

With its frequent point-of-view shifts and sprawling structure, “Let the Great World Spin” is a supremely ambitious work. McCann very nearly demonstrates that he has the talent to pull it off. His lyrical descriptions bring the city to life and he manages to give each character’s section a (mostly) unique style and voice. Even though the same events are touched on over and over again, they come across as fresh because we are seeing them through different eyes.


Unfortunately, the quality of McCann’s prose isn’t always an asset to the novel. In some sections, his penchant for descriptiveness comes across as distant and authorial rather than organic. The frequent point-of-view shifts are sometimes jarring. We are often dropped into a new character’s perspective without any context and it may take pages for us to find out who we are following and why.


The book’s final section is extremely puzzling. Set in the near-present, it introduces Tillie’s granddaughter, Jaslyn, and reveals the fates of many of the book’s characters. Though intended as a culmination, it reads more like a starting point. The good news is that we’re interested in Jaslyn, both as a product of the tragic circumstances which shape the book and as a lead character in her own right and we want to keep reading. The bad news is that the shift to modern day at the very end reduces the majority of the novel to a very elaborate backstory.


“Let the Great World Spin” is a flawed book full of interesting parallels. In examine a miraculous spectacle high in the air, McCann reminds us that miraculous things happen on the ground, too.


7.5/10