Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin is a novel written as a series of wonderfully crafted and subtly linked stories. The common denominator running throughout the book is the true story of French acrobat Philippe Petit who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in August 1974, not long after it was built.

The stories, though, are not about the acrobat but about the ordinary but extraordinary people 110 stories below, the people whose lives intersect whether through wars, telephone lines, wrecks, charity or simply family. These people are drug-addicted hookers, a Bronx mother who grieves her son who died in Vietnam, a Park Avenue woman who mourns her son who also didn't come home from the war. There is a wealthy judge hearing a series of routine criminal cases until he gets the acrobat's. And there are two very different Irish brothers. One devotes his life to helping prostitutes while the other tends a bar and cannot comprehend his brother's seemingly misguided charity.

McCann takes the reader back to a time when computers were in their infancy, before Richard Nixon had resigned, when the nation was as divided perhaps even more than today. He gives us a realistic glimpse of New York in the 1970s, from Park Avenue to the Bronx. And in so doing, he gives us a truly great work of literature.

Hello, I Must Be Going by Christie Hodgen

Hello, I Must Be Going is Arkansas author Christie Hodgen's first novel. And it's a winner.

Hodgen is young but shows amazingly perceptive insight into the 60s, which play a significant role in the story. More importantly, she shows much insight into death -- or rather the ways survivors deal with it, some worse than others.

The book is an easy read, but not an insignificant one. In fact, the father in Hodgen's novel reminds me a bit of the namesake character in Alice McDermott's Charming Billy. Both are good people who lack common sense. You know the kind: They love their family, but their actions say otherwise. They spend their money on booze, the lottery, clothes or, well, you name it -- everything but their family except for those times when they over-spend on family to compensate for past failures.

I shall definitely check out Hodgen's next book. She tells me she's intrigued by the subject of death and grief. Intrigued or not, those are certainly universal themes.
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