Let the Great World Spin - Hardcover

`This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it's a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There's so much passion and humour and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed' -- Dave Eggers"I worry about Colum McCann. What is he going to do after this blockbuster groundbreaking heartbreaking symphony of a novel?" -- Frank McCourt'Every character...grabs you by the throat and makes you care. McCann's dazzling polyphony walks the high wire and succeeds triumphantly' -- Emma Donoghue`Colum's book is astounding. What a wager! And he wins! He shows us that everyone is a funambulist!' -- John Berger`In his own gritty and lyrical voice, Colum McCann has lifted up a handful of souls to the light in this bighearted, adroit, and probing novel, and brought forth a spectrum of the painful, the beautiful, and the unexpected' -- Amy Bloom New York, August 1974. A man is walking the sky. The city stands still in awe. Between the newly built Twin Towers the man is striding, twirling and showboating his way through the air. One hundred and ten stories below him, the lives of eight strangers spin towards each other Corrigan, a radical, passionate Irish monk working in the Bronx with a clutch of prostitutes; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son in Vietnam; her husband Solomon, a cynical judge turning over petty criminals in a downtown court; Lara, a young artist struggling with a spiralling drug addiction and a doomed marriage; Fernando, a thirteen-year-old photographer chasing underground graffiti; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a courageous hooker who used to dream of a better life; and Jazzlyn, her beautiful, reckless daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the high-rises of New York.