Man on a Wire

In the third installment of America's Book Club, Kevin Spinale, S.J., and Tim Reidy consider Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, a novel about beauty, grace and coincidence set in Manhattan in 1974. Built around Philip Petit's famous tight-rope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, McCann's novel is told from a multitude of perspectives, tracing the lives of characters as diverse as a traveling Irish mendicant and a prostitute working the streets of the Bronx. In McCann's world, drug addicts and pimps are worthy of attention, and beauty can be found in the most unlikely of places. Winner of the 2009 National Book Award, Let the Great World Spin is an elegant tapestry of a novel, one that America's reviewer recommends reading twice.