Let The Great World Spin - Colum McCann

'Let The Great World Spin' is a wonderful, insightful book written by an extraordinarily talented Irish author living in New York, Colum McCann. The novel is based around the seventh of August, 1974, the day an either insane or brilliant man walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center, otherwise known as the Twin Towers. As this phenomenon occurs, high up above New York City and all its troubles and cares, the lives of several very different characters collide.

'Let The Great World Spin' unfolds through eight separate narratives. We hear from Ciarán Corrigan, who moves to the Bronx to live with his brother, Corrigan, a radical Irish monk whose life is a daily struggle as he grapples with his loss of faith in God and humanity, Claire, a woman from Park Avenue whose life is slowly falling apart due to the death of her son Joshua in Vietnam, Lara, a mediocre artist struggling with various addictions and the shadow her reckless marriage is casting over her young life, Fernando, a young Italian boy who passes his days trying to get the perfect photographs of graffiti tags in subway tunnels, The Kid, an eighteen year old computer nerd just trying to find out whether the lunatic on the tightrope has fallen or not, Tillie Henderson, a miserable yet courageous hooker whose biggest regret is that her beautiful daughter Jazzlyn was forced to follow in her footsteps and who lives only to ensure the same fate doesn't befall her grand daughters, Solomon, a weary judge and the husband of Claire, Adeline, the beautiful reason for Corrigan's crumbling faith and Gloria, a gutsy housewife mourning three sons. I genuinely found McCann's ability to portray this vast range of personalities and backgrounds with an almost spooky realism mindblowing.

'Let The Great World Spin' is up there with the best literary representations of New York City I have ever encountered. All the uncertainty of the age is also very cleverly woven through the novel, between the devastating results of the war in Vietnam, the oil crisis and the slow birth of the internet. This novel is poetic without being pretentious, touching without being overly sentimental and really quite haunting in its frankness. Another feature I loved was the origin of the title, a quote from Alfred Lord Tennysons' ''Locksley Hall'', a delicate and wistful poem by all accounts. Definitely a novel worth reading.