Spun out by a great New York novel

I have just finished Colum McCann's colossal New York novel 'Let the Great World Spin'. Several different narrators weave in and out of each other's lives against the back drop of Philipe Petit's infamous tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974.

It's one of those books which is so beautifully written you have to keep putting it aside just to digest the use and choice of words. I loved the idea of taking that incredible walk as an underlying theme - the idea that Petit did something so audacious and creative and made something put of thin air - yet that walk, that view doesn't exist anymore. As McCann writes, "The tightrope walk was an act of creation that seemed to stand in direct defiance to the act of destruction twenty seven years later".

The book isn't explicitly a 9/11 novel, but Colum McCann was inspired to write it after his father in law escaped from his office in the north tower, and walked to the family home covered in that grim dust. It's true too that every time you picture the tiny figure balancing between those two towers, you can't help but think what came afterwards, and how New York as a city was united by those two episodes in very different ways. It's definitely story which feeds off New York city - from the Bronx projects aflame to a Park Avenue penthouse.

We went to hear Colum McCann talk about the novel a few weeks ago at the Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO, and it was refreshing to hear someone talk honestly about the length of time it takes to write a book - and the difficulty of speaking in voices which are not your own.