More about the book
It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," with Watergate and the Vietnam War making the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later
Book purchase
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
- Language
- Released
- 2009
- product-detail.submit-box.info.binding
- (Paperback)
Payment methods
We’re missing your review here.
- Language
- English
- Authors
- Colum McCann
- Publisher
- Random House Trade Paperbacks
- Released
- 2009
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 400
- ISBN10
- 0812973992
- ISBN13
- 9780812973990
- Series
- Tags
- Fiction, Historical Fiction, Family, Contemporary Fiction, USA, Death, Literary Fiction, New York, Ireland, Fate, Irish Literature, Brothers, Wealth, Prostitution, Vietnam, Civil War (1861-1865), Dublin
- First published
- 2009
- Original title
- Let the Great World Spin
- Rating
- 4 out of 5
- Description
- It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," with Watergate and the Vietnam War making the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later