The year’s almost done, and I have a huge stack of books I want to get to before the new term begins. The next few posts will be sad references to titles that deserve much better. But I bog myself down with built and obligations in so many ways, it seems unfair to add it to my reading life, no?
So I will merely tell you that if you have not yet read Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, you have a backlist treat. This fictional retelling of a real-life 1974 tightrope crossing between Manhattan’s Twin Towers is a marvellous construction offering up quirky, moving characters with much compassion. Even better, perhaps, is the brilliant, kaleidoscopic (spinning, obviously) plotting — somehow the leaps between the various narrative sections are executed so confidently that the reader simply knows that they will connect, although the threads seem so disparate long into the novel. I’m quite sure I could recommend this to almost anyone, and a reader would find something to savour here.
