Best Book Ever!

OK, so I make that claim regularly.. but this time, reader, you'd better believe me. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a Pulitzer Prize winning epic by American writer Michael Chabon (who might be best known in Britain for Wonder Boys). In my quest to only read American novels during my year in New York, I was excited to be able to pick this hefty tome up for just $1. In fact, only the previous week, a gaggle of shop assistants fell upon a customer who'd come in clutching the novel. I'd never seen that before. Now, I can see why they did it, as this is a Gotham adventure which has truly stayed with me.

It's the story of two cousins who meet one night in Brooklyn. Both harbour dreams of becoming artists, and through the nascent comic-book business, they become the creators of a character to rival Batman and Superman in their prime: The Escapist.

That's the back drop, but the real power of the story is far deeper than that. The two have complex emotional lives - which almost destroy them. The sweep of the novel is epic - across several decades and continents. It's ambitious, beautifully written, and not a word is wasted.

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.