Blog Tour and Giveaway - Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
Random House
400 pgs. 

My Thoughts

Let the Great World Spin is divided, not so much into chapters, as it is into lives.  "Those who saw him hushed."  We open with the tightrope walker but his is not the story we follow.  We start with Corrigan and Cairan, young Irish brothers living with their single mom.  Corrigan is beginning his life-long search to find God, "His theme was happiness -- what it is and what it might not have been...", and bring him to others while Cairan's job is to look after Corrigan.  We then move to Solomon and Claire, living on the Upper East side and trying to make sense of their lives post-Joshua.  These two tales, Corrigan's and Claire's, are the glue that holds the book together.  Corrigan spends time trying to help out the streetwalkers and other people down on their luck while Claire tries to find normalcy after her son is killed in Vietnam, even though he's not over there to fight but to work on a computer program.  Joshua's job is to count the dead.

Throughout the book we find out more about Corrigan, Claire, Cairan and a host of other characters, most notably Tillie and Jazzlyn, a mother-daughter streetwalking duo and Gloria, a mother who's also lost sons to war.  While Petit's tightrope walking between the towers begins the book, it's his rope that leads us through the book, the way the rope connects the towers, his walk serves to bring these stories together.  As we unravel each person's story, we see how they are all connected.

Caveat:  McCann uses some beautiful language throughout the book but he overused one very offensive term for African-Americans.  I noted at least 12 times without a context that would put this in a historical perspective.

Author Interview from Amazon

About The Author

Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as two critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in thirty languages. He has been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was the inaugural winner of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire’s “Best and Brightest,” and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.

The Giveaway
If you want to get a glimpse into Petit's training as well as the lives of those who "saw" him that day, I'm giving away this finished paperback copy of

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

to one lucky, random commenter.
The giveaway is open to all. All you have to do is a

leave a comment stating why you want to read this one. Don't forget your email address.

Giveaway is open until Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:59pm. 

Only one entry per person.

Other TLC Book Tour dates

Thursday, May 13th: Diary of an Eccentric
Friday, May 14th: Lit and Life
Monday, May 17th: Book Club Classics
Tuesday, May 18th: Beth Fish Reads
Wednesday, May 19th: Book Chatter
Thursday, May 20th: Evening All Afternoon
Friday, May 21st: Brunette on a Budget

Paperback provided by publisher and TLC Book Tours.