Account

Company

  Menu
Large Image

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

by

(3,952 reviews)

Get It Preview
$14.99

Share This

Description

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER ? Colum McCann's beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit's daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author's most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century."

A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spincaptures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Colum McCann's TransAtlantic.

"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 humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed." -- Dave Eggers

"Stunning... [an] elegiac glimpse of hope... It's a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it's a novel about families -- the ones we're born into and the ones we make for ourselves." -- USA Today

Tag This Book

This Book Has Been Tagged
6plus (1) fiction (1)

Our Recommendation

Track It. This book has been $1.99 within the past year.

Notify Me When The Price...

  • $
  • If I'm already tracking this book...

to track this book on eReaderIQ.

Track These Authors

to track Colum McCann on eReaderIQ.

  • to be notified each time the price drops on any book by Colum McCann.
  • to stop tracking Colum McCann.

Price Summary

  • We started tracking this book on July 9, 2010.
  • This book was $6.75 when we started tracking it.
  • The price of this book has changed 126 times in the past 5,279 days.
  • The current price of this book is $14.99 last checked one day ago.
  • This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past six months is $4.99.
  • This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $1.99.
  • The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on April 12, 2024.
  • This book has been $1.99 3 times since we started tracking it.
  • The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on December 8, 2024.
  • This book has been $14.99 22 times since we started tracking it.
  • This book is currently at its highest price since we started tracking it.

Genres

Additional Info

  • Text-to-Speech: Disabled
  • Lending: Disabled
  • Print Length: 366 Pages
  • File Size: 3,173 KB

We last verified the price of this book about one day ago. At that time, the price was $14.99. This price is subject to change. The price displayed on the Amazon.com website at the time of purchase is the price you will pay for this book. Please confirm the price before making any purchases.