I've stopped three quarters through Let the Great World Spin by Colum McAnn to prolong the experience a bit. I'm just not sure how long I can hold out. What a story.
The setting is New York, August 1974. The central event and organizing feature of the novel is the Phillipe Petit's (famous tightrope guy) piece de resistance as he hovers, dips, dances, and walks across a wire suspended between the Twin Towers, not yet completed -- stopping New Yorkers in their tracks. Note the little black blip between the two T's on the cover--- clever typographic symmetry. [For the backstory of the famous high wire hijinks, I recommend Man on Wire.] But back to the book.
Unique, engaging characters I've come to care about appear in each chapter, most telling their stories in first person, all in some way connected to the book's precipitating incident. The authenticity of the different voices floors me. Sometimes I must stop, read, and reread -- as transfixed by McAnn's prose as were those 1974 onlookers by Petit's daring walk.
New York in the seventies was not the New York of today. Rent a few Charles Bronson films if you need visual proof. I consider seedy an apt description; raw, gritty, moribund will do as well. Fortunately, McCann is far better than I at depicting our great city and its denizens in all their squalor and glory.
I remain curious about how and whether all the characters intersect. I wonder what comparisons might be drawn to New Yorkers 27 years later, again stopped on their way to work on a beautiful, clear morning, their eyes, hearts, and minds drawn to the towers as they witnessed the terror and tragedy that has come to be known simply by its date.
Well, as a life long New Yorker, it sounds intriguing. I remember quite clearly when the Towers were being built and watching the progress, as my father's favorite route from Brooklyn to points Upstate involved going up the West Side Hwy.
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