Minutes October book: Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

(chosen by JM)






JM chose this book after having four book choices in mind, but no idea which one to choose.  During a girls' weekend she received a strong recommendation to select Let the Great World Spin and she went with that.

About the author:

Colum McCann was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife moved to New York where they currently live with their three children.

He has won numerous international literary awards and his fiction has been published in over thirty languages.

(general autobiographical details from the author's website)

What the publisher says about the book:

New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life; and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York. In the shadow of one reckless and beautiful act, these disparate lives will collide, and be transformed for ever.

What we discussed about the book:

• What does this book say about America 'burning from the inside out"? (see Colum McCann interview).
• In what ways is this "a 9/11 book"?  Is it a book of hope?
• How did the 1970s parallel the late 20th C, early 21st C? (e.g. Vietnam vs Afghanistan/Iraq)
• Could this book have been set anywhere but New York? How is the city itself a character?
• Could we follow all the interlinking characters? (e.g. Who were the people who spoke on the public telephones? Was Tag the boy who answered the phone?)
• Was Tag's photograph intended as a foreshadowing of the 9/11 attack?
• Could we see the links between stories coming, or did they surprise us?
• In what ways were Corrigan and Jazzlyn the Twin Towers? What did the wire between them represent?
• Were we obsessed throughout the book about how the wire-walker would get the wire across between the two buildings?
• Did we find the book slow-paced or about right?
• Examples of the vivid language used - the genius of the author in painting visual pictures with words.
• Were we surprised by who Ciaran married?
• Who were our favourite characters? Why? In what ways did we empathise with Claire and Gloria particularly?

And then we were sidetracked into:

• If this is a book of hope - have the years since 2006 lived up to that expectation?
• Was the font in this book too small to read comfortably? Does our concern about this indicate we are getting old?
• The idea that people can brush each other's lives, barely connecting and yet the impact can send ripples

In other news, we discussed:

• The difficulty of trying to watch the AFL Grand Final live while on holiday in Italy
• Steve Jobs untimely passing.
• We declared that 2012 is to be "little book year" - all book choices are to be 300 pages or less. This is a challenge, not a restriction!

Ratings:
Range: 8 to 9
Average: 8.67

Next book: Bereft by Chris Womersley (chosen by JP)