"Let The Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

Irish-born New York author Colum McCann constructs this National Book Award winner first published in 2009 around the day in August 1974 when French funambulist Philippe Petit walked a tightrope wire between the World Trade Center towers. His novel explores the web created by the events of the day as a handful of very diverse characters' lives are forever intertwined: from the judge before whose court Petit is brought for sentencing, to his wife who is mourning the loss of their son in Vietnam, to a female friend of hers who ends up adopting the children of a woman who died in an automobile accident on the same day. To name just three. Though the prose style is more conservative than that of the Oates texts I so often read, Let The Great World Spin is a complex, multi-layered blend of fact and fiction that encompasses both a wide range of characters and narrative points of view. I may not share Dave Eggers' enthusiasm that it is "one of the greatest ever novels about New York," but I will say that McCann is an innovative story-teller and his novel is a good read.