For the next two days, Oprah will be giving away the ebook version of Colum McCann's new novel "Let the Great World Spin" on her website. This is not the work of any bullshit-slinging pastel-focus hack writer either: this is a hyped-up new literary work by one of New York's hardest-working expat novelists.



You have to register on Oprah's website to download the book, but registration is quick and free. This is like Oprah slipping forty dollars into your pocket. Just take it and mumble "thanks."

McCann's new novel is a modern realist pastiche, centered around Philippe Petit, the mad French acrobat who walked across a tightrope between the twin towers in 1974.



"Why did you do it?"

"There is no why."

Goddamn right.


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Here's an official synopsis from Random Haus:

"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 Spin captures 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."


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"The artistic crime of the century," free of charge for the next 48 hours.

I am "MiracleJo" in Oprah's marketing database now. Which is fine, I guess.

Posted by miracle on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:22:24 -0400 -- permanent link