A City On The Edge

The New York Times book critic, Jonathan Mahler, called “Let The Great World Spin”, “….one of the most, electric, profound novels I’ve read in years.” In Nov. of 2009 Colum McCann received the National Book Award for this wonderful novel.

On a summer morning in 1974 in New York City, Philippe Petit performed the amazing feat of walking a tightrope wire between the World Trade Center buildings, one hundred and ten stories above the ground. Colum McCann uses this event to pivot an incredible story about twelve characters who lived in New York on that day, some who witnessed the event and some who did not. The author’s characters are bound by the single common thread of the grief they have experienced in their lives.

The story begins with two Irish brothers living outside Dublin. They grow up and move to New York City. Corrigan, the younger brother, becomes a monk ministering to prostitutes and senior citizens in the Bronx. Ciaran, the older brother, comes to New York and can only find a job as the stereotypical Irish bartender in Queens. Their lives intersect with hookers, mainly Tillie and her daughter Jazzlyn. Tillie is an incredibly memorable character, soul ridden with regret and guilt, but feisty, funny and smart. All of the characters have a connection----the hookers under the Major Deegan Expressway, the mothers who are grieving for their lost sons in Vietnam, the Guatemalan nurse who fell in love with Corrigan, the two drugged out artists who propel the story with their reckless indifference to life, and the New York City Municipal judge who gets to allocate the sentences that will lead to celebrity status and death. And, there are a group of “hackers” who can anonymously connect themselves to telephone booths across the country. Colum McCann allows us to see and understand that on that day in 1974, and everyday, that nothing stands by itself, everything and everyone seems to be connected. He skillfully, with beautiful, heartfelt writing, links each character as the story moves through that fateful day in 1974.

McCann’s characters are linked in their lives by grief but the story is one of love and redemption. Once again an author with a memorable story to tell shows us the resilience of the human spirit. “As the Great World Spins” presents New York City with all its grit, dirt, sorrow and thrills. In the aftermath of 9/11 Colum McCann portrays two little girls emerging from a Bronx housing complex and being rescued by strangers. He tells us, “That, for me, is the core image of the novel. That’s the moment when the towers get built back up.”

Adventure and Inspiration

This memoir Learning to Breathe was recommended to me because it includes a climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in celebration of the author's 40th birthday. I too am hoping to celebrate my birthday by a Kili climb in 2011. But for the author, the climb was her way of demonstrating her recovery from an horrific accident.

Wright is a photo journalist and in early 2000 she was in Laos working on a photographic book about children in developing countries. She was riding in an old bus up a narrow winding road when her bus was broadsided by a logging truck...and she was seated just at the point of impact! She was so convinced of her imminent death that she wrote a goodbye note to her brother and his children.

But obviously she survived - in spite of broken ribs, a collapsed lung filled with blood and fluid, a punctured diaphragm, a lacerated spleen, and a back, pelvis and coccyx that were also broken. Much of the immediate repair work was done without anesthesia. Wright attributes her survival in part to the breathing techniques that she had learned during several Buddhist retreats she had made in Nepal.

When she was well enough to travel, Wright returned to her home in San Francisco to begin the arduous process of learning to walk properly again. It was during this time, when one of her specialists told her that she would no longer be able to continue traveling and working as a photographer, that she issued her challenge: "I'm going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for my fortieth birthday!" She had just over a year to prove the specialist wrong.

Alison Wright was and is a fearless adventurer. She entertains the reader with many of her pre-accident adventures. Having sustained and recovered from these injuries, she still takes risks that to me are unimaginable: scuba diving, a 709-foot bungee jump in South Africa, white water rafting on class five rapids in Uganda. I loved reading about them all. She has a mindset that is totally foreign to my own. Maybe I'll try to be more adventurous myself now. I look forward to searching out her photographic work.

Tales From A Master

How can I even think about writing a review of a work by the author of “Madame Bovary”, one of the great novels of Western literature and certainly one of my personal favorites. So I won't qualify this as a review – just some passing comments on Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert.

First of all, despite their length, these three pieces are not short stories in the modern sense. The first, “A Simple Heart”, tells the story of Félicité, a faithful servant who devotes her life to her mistress, her mistress's daughter and her parrot. When the beloved parrot Loulou dies, she has him stuffed and continues to revere him, even believing in her later years that he is the Holy Ghost. I know, it sounds goofy, but Flaubert tells the tale simply, without sentimentality, but also without condescension.

The second tale. “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller”, was inspired, according to Margaret Drabble's helpful foreword, by stained glass windows of the saint in Rouen cathedral. The tale was drawn from a medieval story, and like many of the stories of saints I remember from my childhood, first Julian was very, very bad (brutally killing lots of animals) and then he was very, very good (befriending a leper).

The third, entitled “Herodias”, also has a religious theme. This time it's the story of John the Baptist's death. The final climactic scene is familiar to most of us – Salome,Herod's stepdaughter (egged on by her mother Herodias), dances for Herod at his birthday celebration and then demands John's head. But Flaubert's version focuses Herod and his myriad of problems; the demands of the Rome,  the angry tribes outside his walls, as well as his prisoner John the Baptist, who is revered by some in his household but reviled by others

All three tales are told in the concise, unadorned language for which Flaubert is so famous. For example, after the violent scene of the beheading in “Herodias”, the story ends with this: “The three of them took the head of Iaokanann and set off for Galilee. As it was very heavy, they took turns carrying it”. I admired the polished, jewel-like precision of each of these unusual stories.

Not My Genre

I guess you would classify Sizzle by Julie Garwood as a romance/thriller. It was recommended to me by a friend who guaranteed that I would laugh out loud. And she was right. The antics of a hapless hit man who seems to succeed in spite of himself are laughable.

It is the story of Lyra, a film student in Los Angeles who becomes targeted by unknown people for unknown reasons. She returns home to her apartment one day to find two men ransacking her apartment and assaulting her roommate. But Lyra manages to chase them off. Her roommate’s brother happens to be an FBI agent and sends 2 fellow agents to be the girls’ bodyguards. Did I mention that Lyra is drop-dead gorgeous with a body to match? By (no) coincidence her bodyguard Sam is also drop-dead gorgeous with a body to match and a Scottish accent. How long do you think it takes before this is more than a bodyguard-client relationship? I guess that is the “sizzle” of the title.

There are a few minor characters: Lyra’s social-climbing parents, her eccentric devoted grandmother and the above-mentioned hit-man Milo. A few comments on filmmaking, the requisite lovemaking scenes, a murder-suicide, a small-time mobster, a car bombing…that’s about it. The mystery is solved.
Do they live happily ever after? You would have to read the book to find out. But I think you can find something better. That's just my opinion. Lots of people seem to think otherwise as this book is in its second week on the NY Times hardcover best seller list. It's a mystery to me!