Roundup of the latest and greatest Irish books

 

FICTION

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

Following two novels about different kinds of artists (“Dancer” and “Zoli”), acclaimed novelist Colum McCann widens his lens with a new novel “Let the Great World Spin.” McCann channels the American novelist Don DeLillo in the new book’s opening scene. We get a breathless, microscopic panorama of downtown Manhattan as the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit makes his famous walk between the Twin Towers. Then, McCann takes us on a frenetic tour of New York in the 1970s, when the city was much more gritty than gleaming.

At the center of this book are two Irish brothers who settle amidst the prostitutes and violence of the Bronx. But McCann’s book contains a chorus of voices. We also meet a group of mothers from very different parts of the city who are bound by one simple fact: they have lost sons in Vietnam. This storyline has particular resonance in this day and age, as American mothers continue to lose sons and daughters in the Middle East.

McCann’s vision of New York is ecstatic, almost mystic, in this ambitious book. “Let the Great World Spin” may not quite measure up to “Dancer,” but is a disturbingly good read just the same. What “Let the Great World Spin” does show is that Colum McCann remains one of the most interesting fiction writers working today.

$25 / 349 pages / Random House

 

"Commencement" by J. Courtney Sullivan

One of the most talked-about debut novels of the summer is J. Courtney Sullivan’s “Commencement.” Sullivan’s book takes the reader through the different perspectives of four young women at Sullivan’s own alma mater, Smith College, and into the first few years of their adult lives beyond. Thus, she has drawn comparisons to fellow Irish Catholic author Mary McCarthy: many say “Commencement” is “The Group” for a new generation of American women. Gloria Steinem claims that: “’Commencement’ makes clear that the feminist revolution is just beginning,” but Sullivan’s four heroines struggle throughout the novel with different and often contradictory ideas about what it means to be a feminist, a friend, and a young woman in 21st century America.

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Nster.com