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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
This title has been on my radar, if not my TBR, for a while. And it keeps getting brought up on the podcast I listen to so when my sister-in-love was cleaning off her shelves and getting rid of books and this title was up for grabs, I grabbed.
I've not read McCann before but what I do know of him is he writes great, sweeping, rich stories. If evidence is needed all one has to do is read this title.
This is an ambitious story and how McCann pulled it together is beyond my imagination or comprehension. He took a couple of different events and crafted a story from them to help him process the events of 9/11. What's intriguing about this premise is 9/11 is never mentioned and not a character in this book. The story takes place, with the exception of the first and last chapter, in August 1974 and centers on one specific day in that month. August 7, the day a man walked on a tightrope between the twin towers, one of which was still under construction.
While this story features a cast of about a dozen characters there are two that rise above the rest and are the common thread throughout the book. Ciaran and John Corrigan. Out of all the voices in the story Ciaran's is the one we hear the most of, even when he doesn't appear in the story at certain moments. His brother, John, or Corrigan as everyone including Ciaran calls him, is secondary in voice but plays a very important part of the story.
What you have at first is a bunch of stories about a bunch of different people and you wonder how they could possibly be pulled together as the book jacket promises. And where does the tightrope walker figure in - he does right? Keep reading because it becomes clear and the dots begin to connect and McCann does it so seamlessly and well that there's a delight when he allows the story to connect and you are tracking with it. He doesn't give away too much, he gives the reader just enough to satisfy the curiosity and know that there is more to come.
The conclusion is that McCann spins a story that shows just how small our world is and how we are all connected in ways we don't even realize and how those connections influence our futures.
This review is unsatisfactory but to say all I want to would spoil the reading experience for anyone who wants to give this title a go. This story will not be for everyone, I wasn't sure it would be for me, but it will be for some and it will move some in ways they don't expect. It did me.
I've not read McCann before but what I do know of him is he writes great, sweeping, rich stories. If evidence is needed all one has to do is read this title.
This is an ambitious story and how McCann pulled it together is beyond my imagination or comprehension. He took a couple of different events and crafted a story from them to help him process the events of 9/11. What's intriguing about this premise is 9/11 is never mentioned and not a character in this book. The story takes place, with the exception of the first and last chapter, in August 1974 and centers on one specific day in that month. August 7, the day a man walked on a tightrope between the twin towers, one of which was still under construction.
While this story features a cast of about a dozen characters there are two that rise above the rest and are the common thread throughout the book. Ciaran and John Corrigan. Out of all the voices in the story Ciaran's is the one we hear the most of, even when he doesn't appear in the story at certain moments. His brother, John, or Corrigan as everyone including Ciaran calls him, is secondary in voice but plays a very important part of the story.
What you have at first is a bunch of stories about a bunch of different people and you wonder how they could possibly be pulled together as the book jacket promises. And where does the tightrope walker figure in - he does right? Keep reading because it becomes clear and the dots begin to connect and McCann does it so seamlessly and well that there's a delight when he allows the story to connect and you are tracking with it. He doesn't give away too much, he gives the reader just enough to satisfy the curiosity and know that there is more to come.
The conclusion is that McCann spins a story that shows just how small our world is and how we are all connected in ways we don't even realize and how those connections influence our futures.
This review is unsatisfactory but to say all I want to would spoil the reading experience for anyone who wants to give this title a go. This story will not be for everyone, I wasn't sure it would be for me, but it will be for some and it will move some in ways they don't expect. It did me.
This book was a little boring at times. It’s hard to get sucked in and attached to characters when the stories are all so short. I do think the book is a masterpiece and written extremely well. All the characters are woven together through the tight rope walker and I think that was beautifully done.
I loved this book. The way the author wove the lives of the characters together was masterful. I found myself waiting to see how the final few connections between the various characters would be made. Lovely writing, great characters and not a difficult read.
Good, nice, well-told stories— that’s all they were, and perhaps that’s all they were meant to be (I don’t see what the big fuss is; maybe it’s something about the Twin Towers that rocked the American emotion).
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
I've been bothered lately by some of the terrible things in the news, etc, and purely from my emotional stand point it was not a good time for me to read this book and I ended up shelving it to maybe read another time. It was like eating ice cream with a sore throat... I couldn't figure out if it was helping or making it worse! I admit I didn't get very far, but the language, the darkness/grittiness, that stark dirtiness that comes from examining any lower part of human nature, was gently and beautifully handled by the author. But I just couldn't delve into it at the moment. Maybe another time.
Really liked this author's writing. This NYC novel has nicely interwoven plots. It did get a little tedious toward the end, but would definitely recommend it.
I was expecting to like this book a lot more than I did. When it was selected for book club, it was described as a book about life in New York in the 1970s. Well, I've always wanted to live in New York, so I was really excited to start it, but it read fairly slowly until about halfway in. "Spin" is a series of vignettes portraying snapshots of the various characters' lives. All of the stories weave in and out of each other, and culminate on the day Philippe Petit walked a tight-rope between the World Trade Center Twin Towers. (That was the most interesting part; shortly after finishing the book, I watched the documentary Man on Wire, which chronicled the journey to that walk and was MUCH more enthralling than this book.)
Beautiful, rich, complex characters. Loved how all the narratives tied together.