OK so I’m a little late to the game on this one (it’s out in paperback ferheavensake), but having just finished McCann’s National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, my head is still spinnin’.  As opposed to some of the winners in prior years, where you’re left scratching your head and wondering what the heck the jury was thinking, McCann’s book is a well-deserved winner.

McCann has managed to weave disparate, well-wrought episodes into a larger whole that provides both a snapshot of an era in America’s life, but also an elegy of sorts to post-9/11 America.  And despite the inherent bereavement and loss, hope is shored up.  Encouragement is given to choke back and choke up, with due acknowledgment that this life isn’t always fair.  And beauty and comfort are found in the least likely of circumstances.  That’s life.

Irish immigrant McCann also distinguishes himself well with his ability to convincingly inhabit a myriad of characters, regardless of their age, social station or race.

With the foregoing as some backdrop, you get a brief taste from these excerpts:

“That’s how it goes.  Everything flies through the windshield.”

“Make this world dark.  Release me.  Give me love, Lord, but not just yet.”

“We stumble on, now, we drain the light from the dark, to make it last…. Sounds outside, growing clearer in the silence, traffic at first, machine hum, cranework, playgrounds, children, the tree branches down on the avenue slapping each other around.  We stumble on…, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves.  It is almost enough….  The world spins.  We stumble on.  It is enough….  The clock.  The fan.  The breeze.  The world spinning.”

Highly recommended.