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smaasch, August 4, 2012 (view all comments by smaasch)
very well-written story of 12 people who live in new york city in the 70's. he interweaves their lives. you care about these characters. it is an amazing book.
Sandikal, August 3, 2009 (view all comments by Sandikal)
In my opinion, "Let the Great World Spin" is a contender for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. It is beautifully written and makes the New York City of the Seventies really come alive.
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chelseagirl, July 1, 2009 (view all comments by chelseagirl)
I was lucky enough to get a review copy of this book, and I can't praise it highly enough. In 1974, I was in my early teens, and living in a distant suburb of NYC; McCann gets the feel of the city at that time -- menacing and hopeful, and very down-at-heel -- absolutely right. The characters and the writing are marvellous. Read it.
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Let the Great World Spin
Used Hardcover
Colum McCann
0 stars -
0 reviews
$10.50
In Stock
Product details
368 pages
Random House -
English9781400063734
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Miriam,
McCann chooses to describe one day in the life of New York City, the day in 1974 that the aerialist walked between the not-quite-finished Twin Towers. The chasm between rich and poor, the joy of connection, and the inevitability of our mortality are told through the lives of six different New Yorkers, including that incredible man dancing on that thin wire who epitomizes joy and triumph, if only for a short and precarious time. If you love New York, you’ve got to read this book. If you love the human journey towards the possible, you’ve got to read this book.
by Miriam
"Review"
by Booklist (starred review),
"[S]himmering, shattering....In McCann's wise and elegiac novel of origins and consequences, each of his finely drawn, unexpectedly connected characters balances above an abyss, evincing great courage with every step."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Unfocused and overlong, though written with verve, empathy and stylistic mastery."
"Review"
by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
"McCann has written more than a supremely woven tapestry of imagined lives; through their struggles, he clears a path for healing and redemption from the cataclysm of a later time."
"Review"
by The Boston Globe,
"McCann gives a superb account of the walker's long practicing....And if some of his other attempts to elevate work into myth are strained, he succeeds with his image of a flight that lifts the heaviness of a whole city."
"Review"
by Jonathan Mahler, The New York Times Book Review,
"One of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years.... It is a mark of the novel's soaring and largely fulfilled ambition that McCann just keeps rolling out new people, deftly linking each to the next, as his story moves toward its surprising and deeply affecting conclusion."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
McCann's most ambitious work to date offers a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of life in New York City in the 1970s.
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