I met Colum McCann in June, at a writers' conference where he spoke about his writing and research process. I sat enraptured as he spoke of living among the subterranean homeless people who live in New York City subway tunnels. This research was for another book, but when reading Let the Great World Spin, I could imagine him researching its characters as thoroughly. How else could he write convincingly in the voice of a prostitute or a radical priest?
After his talk, as he signed my book, I awkwardly attempted to chat him up, He was polite, but my questions were dumb. I was starstruck. He explained that he wrote something in Irish (we'd say Gaelic) that means...um...oh my gosh, I was so starstruck I forgot. I probably wrote the translation down somewhere. Here is a photo of that treasured autograph:
Colum McCann is from Ireland technically, although he has demonstrated that he is a citizen of the world. One of his central characters in this novel is an Irish guy who comes to the United States to visit his brother. (For this tiny bit only McCann could write from his own experience rather than his virtuosic research.) The brother is a father (a priest) who works in a nursing home but looks after a colony of prostitutes working near his home in the Bronx. That alone would be enough of a story for a typical novel, but McCann adds more fully-realized characters and stories, relates them all to each other and the spectacle of a tightrope walker who walked a wire strung between the two World Trade Center towers in 1974.
Here's something unique: McCann collaborated with musician Joe Hurley to create a song cycle based on the book. "The House that Horse Built (Let the Great World Spin)" is the result. I just now learned of it, and that Patti Smith sings on it. YES I'm going to score a copy!
You still have some summer left. There will be stormy days and super-hot days. My recommendation is to make yourself comfortable with a glass of ice-water, possibly infused with strawberries, and read this book.
