LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann (Random House, 2010)
Winner of the National Book Award, this novel is Colum McCann’s emotional response to the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. He achieves resolve, hope and rebuilding by harkening back to New York City as it was in 1974 when Viet Nam was raging, art was flourishing, liberation theology was emerging and technology was quickly developing. The novel reads like a thick braid of short stories that each describes different lives of average New Yorkers – hookers in The Bronx, a soul-searching man at odds with his vows to The Order, drug-addicted artists from The Village, a therapy group of grieving war mothers, an 18-year old computer hack prodigy, a grandmother in jail, a judge, a lover. This intricate maze of people – whose ordinary days are charged with life by the hand of an awesomely skilled writer -- are joined together the day Phillipe Petit walks a tightrope wire between the iconic World Trade Center Towers on August 7, 1974. A stunning, broad portrait of New York City, McCann’s seventh novel, rooted in belief and grief, love and healing, is a smashing, impossible-to-put-down read (9.5/10).
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
RollnSmoke Reviews: THE LAZARUS PROJECT
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead Books, 2008)
Author Aleksandar Hemon, born in Sarajevo and now living in Chicago, creates a strangely intertwined narrative that centers on a struggling writer named Brik (also a Bosnian native who lives in Chicago post-9/11) who is inspired by the story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant who was shot to death in Chicago in 1908 amidst an ugly American obsession with anarchism. In his quest to write this immigrant story, Brik secures a grant, and with a thuggish childhood friend, travels to Ukraine, Moldova and ultimately to Sarejevo to realize the full story. During this strange, bleak journey, much is revealed about Brik, particularly about the nature of his strained marriage to an accomplished American neurosurgeon. But also, there are flashbacks to the surviving sister of the said unjustly murdered immigrant who is left alone to cope with abusive, crooked Chicago cops. Hemon is a skilled writer and manages to inject odd humor into weird predicaments, but ultimately details about pogroms and massacres, whore-houses and hateful murders, death and despair dominate this cinematic and complex narrative whose central mysteries are never fully resolved (7.5/10).
Author Aleksandar Hemon, born in Sarajevo and now living in Chicago, creates a strangely intertwined narrative that centers on a struggling writer named Brik (also a Bosnian native who lives in Chicago post-9/11) who is inspired by the story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant who was shot to death in Chicago in 1908 amidst an ugly American obsession with anarchism. In his quest to write this immigrant story, Brik secures a grant, and with a thuggish childhood friend, travels to Ukraine, Moldova and ultimately to Sarejevo to realize the full story. During this strange, bleak journey, much is revealed about Brik, particularly about the nature of his strained marriage to an accomplished American neurosurgeon. But also, there are flashbacks to the surviving sister of the said unjustly murdered immigrant who is left alone to cope with abusive, crooked Chicago cops. Hemon is a skilled writer and manages to inject odd humor into weird predicaments, but ultimately details about pogroms and massacres, whore-houses and hateful murders, death and despair dominate this cinematic and complex narrative whose central mysteries are never fully resolved (7.5/10).