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.
Colum McCann is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including "Apeirogon," due to be published in Spring 2020. His other books include "TransAtlantic," "Let the Great World Spin," "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and “Zoli,” all of which were international best-sellers.
“Let the Great World Spin” won the National Book Award in 2009. His fiction has been published in over 40 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent.
Colum has won numerous international awards and has been a bestseller on four continents. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish association of artists, Aosdana. He has also received a Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres from the French government. He is the cofounder of the global non-profit story exchange organisation Narrative 4.
In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year." Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for Irish Literature.
His short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005.
Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian.
Colum teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht.
Colum has completed his new novel, "Apeirogon." Crafted out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material, McCann tells the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan. One is Israeli. One is Palestinian. Both are fathers. Both have lost their daughters to the conflict. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories they recognize the loss that connects them, and they begin to use their grief as a weapon for peace.
In the novel McCann crosses centuries and continents. He stitches together time, art, history, nature and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our times.
It is scheduled for release in the U.S in February 2020.
Advance copies will be available here on GoodReads!!!!
我真高兴我看了这本书。有关于生活和信仰。 很难说主线是那个无名神秘的走钢丝者还是从来没有出现过的科里根,故事是围绕那个特定时代展开。 看完第一部分的时候,我在想,为什么国内就不能产生这样的作品。作者用一种包容的、理解的、富有浪漫主义情怀的态度来诠释“美国精...
评分读的是英文版,而且是用很纠结的方式读——在iPad和iPhone上,通过Amazon的App读,于是留下的Highlight无法转到任何地方。不擅写评论,就抄抄书吧。 原文: Page 20 “ The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth -- the filth, the war, the poverty -- was that life co...
评分题目是从别人那里借来的,希望题目的主人不会介意。 旋转的只能是漩涡。要是蓝熊没有被侏儒海盗救起来,他会在马尔姆激流的尽头闻到根氟的味道,然后掉到另一个空间里么?如果那位渔夫没有机智地抓住水桶浮到海面,他会在莫斯肯漩涡里发现另一个世界么?时间是个漩涡的隧洞,...
评分Let the great world spin To my surprise,a novel can be written like this.I can’t make it clear that what the novel tells us at first.The author divide his novel into several parts and each part contains several passages.Each passage tells us a story and ...
评分—— 战争是关于虚荣心的,他说。战争属于老人,老得不忍去照镜子、所以让年轻人去送死的人。战争是虚荣的聚会。他们希望简化一切:恨你的仇敌,别去对他有任何了解。他声称,战争是最不符合美国精神的,战争背后没有理想主义,只有失败。 —— 所有这些关于自由的大话。全是...
这本书的语言风格,老实说,初读时有些令人感到眩晕,但一旦你找到了它的“节拍”,就会被那种近乎狂热的、巴洛克式的表达欲所吸引。它不像某些当代小说那样追求极简和留白,恰恰相反,作者似乎倾尽全力,想要将世界上的所有感官信息一股脑地倾倒在读者面前。那些关于贫困、关于艺术、关于性、关于政治斗争的描写,都不是点到为止的轻描淡写,而是浸透了血液和汗水的浓墨重彩。特别是书中对某些场景的细致入微的描绘,让我产生了强烈的“在场感”。我能清晰地想象出那些霓虹灯下闪烁的招牌,能感受到空气中弥漫的紧张感,甚至能听见远处传来的警笛声。更妙的是,作者似乎对“道德判断”保持着一种近乎冷酷的超脱,他只是呈现,让世界自己去发声,去辩论。这种处理方式,使得即便是书中那些行为举止堪称恶劣的角色,也拥有了令人信服的人性深度。它迫使你去思考:在那样一个混乱且充满诱惑的熔炉里,究竟什么是“正确”,什么是“错误”?这本书对我来说,更像是一次文学上的“极限挑战”,它要求你付出全部的注意力,但回报你的是一个前所未有的、充满张力和生命力的世界。
评分如果用一个词来形容这本书给我留下的印象,那可能是“强烈的生命力”。这不是一本关于“美好生活”的赞歌,而是一曲献给混乱、挣扎和不完美人性的颂歌。作者在描绘那些社会边缘人物的困境时,没有丝毫的怜悯或俯视,他用一种近乎原始的、原始的尊重去对待他们的每一个选择,无论这些选择多么令人咋舌。我尤其喜欢书中那种“偶然性”的力量。许多关键的转折点,都不是因为深思熟虑的计划,而是源于一次突发的冲动、一个不经意的眼神,或者一场突如其来的天气变化。这种对“命运随机性”的承认,使得故事的真实感大大增强,因为它吻合了我们对真实生活的体验——生活很少按剧本走。这本书的章节安排也很有意思,它们就像是来自不同视角的快照,看似独立,却又在潜移默化中相互折射。读完后,我意识到,这部作品的成功之处,在于它拒绝提供单一的解释,而是将理解的责任,百分之百地交还给了读者,让你自己去拼接、去感受、去定义这个“旋转的世界”在你心中的意义。这是一种非常高级的文学邀请。
评分我一直在思考这本书的核心魅力究竟在哪里,最终我觉得,它在于其对“瞬间凝固”的艺术追求。书中的那个标志性事件,虽然是故事的起点,但其影响却像投入湖面的石子,激起的涟漪扩散到了每一个角落,影响了每一个角色的命运轨迹,即便他们并未直接参与其中。这是一种非常精妙的叙事结构,它让所有看似不相关的线索,最终都指向了同一个宇宙中心。这种结构处理手法,让我联想到了古典悲剧中的“命运感”,但它又被放置在一个极度现代和世俗的背景下,形成了强烈的反差和张力。阅读过程中,我感觉自己就像一个在巨大迷宫中穿梭的旅人,总以为自己已经把握住了方向,却总是在下一个转角发现新的、更复杂的迷雾。书中对不同社会阶层人内心独白的捕捉尤为精准,从底层挣扎者的卑微自尊,到上流社会人士的空虚与矫饰,作者都拿捏得恰到好处,没有陷入任何一方的刻板印象。这种对复杂人性的坦诚,是这本书能超越单纯的社会写实,升华为经典文学作品的关键所在。它没有提供廉价的答案,只是提供了一个值得深思的、关于人类境况的精妙模型。
评分那本《Let the Great World Spin》读完后,我脑子里久久萦绕的不是某个具体的情节,而是一种难以言喻的、宏大而又细微的时代脉动。作者对七十年代纽约这座城市的描摹,简直像是用最细腻的画笔勾勒出了一幅色彩斑斓、声嘶力竭的社会浮世绘。你仿佛能闻到那个时代特有的混合气味:汗水、酒精、未竟的梦想和一丝丝绝望中迸发出的、近乎野蛮的生命力。书中的人物,他们不是被雕刻出来的完美雕塑,而是活生生、会犯错、会挣扎的凡人。我尤其欣赏作者如何将那些社会底层的小人物与那些身居高位、看似光鲜亮丽的精英阶层巧妙地编织在一起,展现出一种奇特的共生关系。那种感觉就像你在曼哈顿的某个街角,突然抬起头,看到了高耸入云的摩天大楼的尖顶,以及紧挨着它的、被阴影笼罩的弄堂,两者互为背景,缺一不可。这本书的叙事节奏很独特,时而像疾驰的地铁,带着一股无可阻挡的力量向前冲;时而又像在午夜时分,一个醉汉在街头喃喃自语,充满了哲思和胡言乱想。它不是那种让你读完后能清晰总结出“中心思想”的作品,它更像是一场浸入式的体验,一次对特定时空环境的深刻呼吸。读完后,我忍不住去查阅了许多关于那个时期纽约历史的资料,这种阅读体验的延伸性,是真正优秀小说才具备的魅力。
评分这本书的阅读体验,更像是在参与一场马拉松式的精神漫步。它不是那种可以轻松阅读、让人在沙发上打发时间的消遣读物,它需要你投入严肃的思考和情绪的共鸣。我特别欣赏作者对“噪音”的处理。书中充斥着各种声音——街头艺人的表演、政治演讲的煽动、人群的喧哗、内心的自我质疑,这些声音如同背景音乐般贯穿始终,营造出一种永不停歇的、焦虑的都市氛围。我感觉自己仿佛被扔进了一个巨大的、永不停歇的机器的齿轮缝隙中,既渺小又不可或缺。这种对“环境”的细致刻画,已经超越了简单的背景设定,环境本身成为了一个有生命的、具有强烈意志力的角色。它塑造了人,也反过来被人的活动所定义。当我合上书本时,那种喧嚣感并未立即消失,而是残留在耳边,迫使我开始审视自己日常生活中那些被忽略的声音和细节。这本书成功地做到了“文学的在场性”,它不仅仅是关于过去的故事,它提出的关于社会结构、个体自由与集体意志的探讨,在今天的语境下依然振聋发聩。
评分Not an easy read but quite satisfying.
评分有声书太难听入了,爱尔兰口音太重,经常一听就走神。估计得看实体书。
评分不怎么好看。 出乎我的意料。看介绍应该是个很有意思的故事,可惜写的一般。上次看得the brief wondrous life of oscar wao跟这书一样,都是多重narritives,但都写的不够好。这种转换叙述者的写法,很容易让人感觉是作者在炫耀技术,弄巧成拙就成了作文练习。我觉得这两书的作者功力都不行,此书尤其像是短篇故事集,让人没动力读下去,我就始终不care里面的故事情节。当然,也有可能 多重narratives的目的是要塑造更立体的人物,但这书又没什么新鲜的characters。偏偏他还得了national book award, Oscar Wao得了pulitzer, 看来这种小说就是投评论家所好了。so far, 我最喜欢的小说,大多还是英国人写的。不知道是不是池塘对面的作家得确更加出色些。
评分很久前在书店看到中文版,翻了翻记下书名;前年暑期在机场书店偶遇原版;去年又在图书馆看到中文版,忍不住借来再对照原文精读。现McCann已是最爱作家之一,本书绝对经典!描绘了社会暗黑面,然而仍向光明。非常钦佩作者对异国了解之深。
评分不怎么好看。 出乎我的意料。看介绍应该是个很有意思的故事,可惜写的一般。上次看得the brief wondrous life of oscar wao跟这书一样,都是多重narritives,但都写的不够好。这种转换叙述者的写法,很容易让人感觉是作者在炫耀技术,弄巧成拙就成了作文练习。我觉得这两书的作者功力都不行,此书尤其像是短篇故事集,让人没动力读下去,我就始终不care里面的故事情节。当然,也有可能 多重narratives的目的是要塑造更立体的人物,但这书又没什么新鲜的characters。偏偏他还得了national book award, Oscar Wao得了pulitzer, 看来这种小说就是投评论家所好了。so far, 我最喜欢的小说,大多还是英国人写的。不知道是不是池塘对面的作家得确更加出色些。
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