Staff Picks Blog

Nominated as a finalist for the 2009 National Book Awards, Colum McCann uses Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers as a tangential connecting point for the lives of its central characters.  Rich and heartfelt, the stories of Petit, an Irish monk, a Bronx hooker and her daughter, a Park Avenue mother who mourns the loss of her son who was killed in Vietnam, and many others swirl and impact each other on the streets of New York.  More than a shared common experience, the wire walker serves to remind the reader that what ties together the indifferent steel and concrete of the City are thousands upon thousands of interconnected people, all strung together by the human conditions of suffering, resilience, tragedy and compassion.

My ultimate compliment to this book is that when I started it I was trapped inside of an airplane surrounded by two screaming babies. I have to assume that they cried the whole flight, because they were crying at liftoff when I started reading and crying when I finally stopped at touchdown; what they did in between I haven’t a clue, as I was deep in the heart of New York.