Bronx Comes To Life In A New Book

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Published on October 21, 2009, 2:05 pm
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An American masterpiece from internationally bestselling novelist Colum McCann—a dazzling and hauntingly rich vision of the loveliness, pain, and mystery of New York City in the 1970’s In the dawning light of the late summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. . . .

Colum McCann, photo by Brendan Bourke.

It is August, 1974, and a tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter-mile in the sky. In the streets below, ordinary lives become extraordinary as award-winning novelist Colum McCann crafts this stunningly realized portrait of a city and its people.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among prostitutes in Bronx. A group of mothers, gathered in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn the sons who died in Vietnam, discovers how much divides them even in their grief.

Further uptown, Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter, determined not only to take care of her “babies” but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful novel comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the tightrope walker’s “artistic crime of the century.”

McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Let the Great World Spin is an unmistakable and triumphantly American masterpiece.

It could be bought online here.

The Irish-born writer, whose work has garnered nominations for an Oscar and the National Book Award, will return to An Beal Bocht Café — one of his favorite bars in the city — to read from his new novel, at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. Mr. McCann has read at the bar twice before, however his latest visit is creating more buzz thanks to the novel’s setting: South Bronx circa 1974.

A few related videos follow below.

Let The Great World Spin – Part I
Directed by Giovanni Villari

“Those who saw him hushed.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/3w0R8XuukA0&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

Let The Great World Spin – Part II
Directed by Giovanni Villari

“This is the House that Horse built.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/qY6fMczL5Og&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

Let The Great World Spin – Inspirations
Bloomsbury Publishing

http://www.youtube.com/v/kAMZSpHfURg&hl=en&fs=1

 

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Jonas Bronck is the pseudonym under which we publish and manage the content and operations of The Bronx Daily.™ | Bronx.com - the largest daily news publication in the borough of "the" Bronx with over 1.5 million annual readers. Publishing under the alias Jonas Bronck is our humble way of paying tribute to the person, whose name lives on in the name of our beloved borough.