Reviews

• 文章の美しさ、ストーリーの面白さ、そして深い感動の３つがそろったまれな文芸小説

  1974年8月、ベトナム戦争のさなかにある男がニューヨーク市の世界貿易センターのツインビルの間をワイヤーで綱渡りした。フランス人の綱渡り芸人Philippe Petitのこの快挙は本や映画「Man on Wire」で知られているが、このLet the Great World Spinでは、Petitは登場人物たちをつなぐ材料でしかない。 登場するのは、アイルランド人の牧師、娼婦の母娘、ベトナム戦争で息子を失った金持ちの主婦、判事、南部出身の黒人女性、…など普通であれば接点がないはずのニューヨーカーたち。そんな彼らが運命の絆で繋がってゆく。 通常の小説ではなく、異なる登場人物を主人公にした短編の形でひとつの小説に組み立てているところが今年ピューリッツアー賞を受賞したOlive Kitteridgeに似ている。白人男性のMcCannが娼婦だけでなく、上流階級の白人女性から黒人と白人のハーフの若い女性の内なる声をリアルに描いていることに感心した。 どの登場人物も悲劇と不運を体験しているが、それぞれに意味のある人生を生きるためにささやかな闘いをくりひろげている。他者から見れば、意味がないような人生かもしれないが、作者はとても暖かな目でみつめている。最後のストーリーですべての登場人物の人生がひとつに繋がり、それぞれの意味をふたたび考えさせてくれる。 リリカルで美しい文芸小説だが、気取った表現がなくて読みやすい。しかし、理解するためにはある程度米国文化や歴史、洋書に慣れている必要がある。

• 美しくも切ない、色彩豊かなタペストリーの様な物語

  1974年、NYのツインタワーにワイヤーを架けて、その上を綱渡りで歩いた男がいた。その光景をニューヨーカー達は固唾を飲んで見守ったのだが…。 この事件が物語の軸ではないのだが、たまたまその場に居合わせたまたは何らかの関係のある人物たちの短編集のようでありながら、実は一つの長編作品であるようにも見える不思議な作品。 亡くなっていく人々への思慕、生きることへの不安、消せない後悔……そんな誰もが心の片隅にそっと隠している思いを、少しずつ綴った切ない、けれど力強い作品。 物語の一つの大きな軸は、アイルランド人の宣教師コリガン。彼は老人ホームなどの施設で老人の世話などをしながらも、自分の住まいに入り浸る近所のhooker（売春婦）達にも優しさをもって接し、彼女たちから慕われている。そこに、アイルランドから兄が彼を訪ねてやってくる。物語は、この兄を語り手に淡々とすすむ。コリガンはその一生を神に捧げると心に決めたものの、あるグアテマラ人の看護婦と恋に落ちる。しかし、ある日アパートで警察の手入れが行われ、コリガンと親しくしていたhooker達が警察に連れて行かれる。彼女たちを救おうとしたコリガンに、悲劇が襲う。 そして、物語は時と場面をかえつつ、行き来戻りつ、着実に進んでいく。最後までじっくりと読んでいくと、色とりどりの織り糸が紡ぎだすタペストリーの様な美しい物語に心動かされることとなるだろう。 英語はそれほど難しくなく、比較的読みやすいと思う。だが、場面設定がころころと変わるので慣れるまでに少々時間がかかるかもしれない。

• This is a novel that takes in the whole world within the span of a single day in New York City that, like any day in any city, town, or hamlet, is filled with the ordinary and, sometimes, the extraordinary. McCann tells us the title of is book is lifted from Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" - "Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,/Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change" - in a couplet that points to the the novelist's universal ambitions. Leave it to an Irish storyteller to write so compelling an entry in the Great American Novel sweepstakes...it's pretty much here, and it's not - McCann's characters aren't straight out of central casting, the whores don't have hearts of gold, he seems uninterested in predatory oligarchs. But he is indeed very interested in human predation, in the manner of Lu Xun, for whom "people eat people," or "men eat men," is a distillation of human history. Despite this realization, the converse - redemption and "valuing people" - nevertheless happen. The novel as grand verismo concoction: diverse New Yorkers, living their lives on a sweltering day in August 1974, when an aptly named wire-walker ambles across a 200-pound cable stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. McCann has sacramentalized these ordinary lives that, like most lives, are fraught with circumstance and drama and are thus anything but ordinary. He lifts these stories up in a very secular way, despite the centrality of an extraordinary Irishman - an against-type "whiskey priest" whose humanity nearly overwhelms the book - interweaving the "ordinary" with the day's extraordinary event, raising the mundane to the nearly magical, the routine to the unique, and all against the towering backdrop of New York City. The author does so in palpable recognition that our cities are our universal places, our repositories of culture, history, mythology, dreams...the places where our great narratives are redacted and woven into the national tapestry, the meaning of which we argue endlessly. The book continues to sink in, long after it's closed, working like a time-release capsule, and I've already returned to it to reread passages of particular power or insight. It will almost certainly strike some readers as a narrative mess; it's told mostly in first-person, from numerous points of view, and is very close to a novel in stories. In turns, it's magical, brutal, closely observant, coolly distant, tremendously funny, and to my eyes a startling piece of writing by a young master who slides in and out of diverse characters and dialects as though he's lived his entire life in the native habitats of each...a power British novelist David Mitchell and very few others possess. I'll conclude where McCann begins, with a quotation from Alexandar Hemon's wonderful The Lazarus Project, which McCann deploys as a promise to the reader: "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is." It's a promise that, to me at least, Let the Great World Spin fulfills.

• En version original. Lo recibi en seguida. un libro muy bueno y lo puedo recomendar a cualquiera. En version original algo dificil si uno no es nativo

• I loved this book. The beautifully crafted writing is mesmerising. I found myself re-reading sentences that were perfect little poems. The story itself is wonderful: dirty and gritty, beautiful and uplifting, heartbreaking and deeply satisfying. This story is about love. Unconditional love. Romantic love. Loss. Redemption. One of the most completely absorbing and dazzling books I've read and I read a lot! Thank you Colum for creating such a beautiful story out of such urban grit and poverty.

• A wonderful work of fiction in which each character is so real and fully developed. I really enjoyed this book.

• I had no idea what to expect as the book was recommended to me after my request for “something literary but not obscure”. It took me a while to get into it but once I’d reached the end of the first chapter I was hooked. The book takes the pretext of the true story of the illegal tightrope crossing between the twin towers in the early seventies as a metaphor for those suspended lives of a cast of characters in New York whose lives are connected across a series of events and shared experiences- from a street lay priest to the prostitutes he helps, to mothers who have lost their sons in Vietnamese, to a court judge etc. The writing and characterization lead the reader deeper and deeper into a connected society of individuals searching for meaning, solace, connection and love in a society that offers none. In the pain of loss and the dire social conditions, it is that individual human connection that offers the only hope and meaning to life. In the end the book leaves a sense of hope, pulling no punches, offering no glib responses to the painful quest for meaning, but creating small gestures of understanding and care that bring a sense to each human life. Powerful writing and a truly great work of literature. Absolutely recommended.

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