Let the Great World Spin

The book begins with a prologue that describes a tightrope walker crossing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It is set in 1974, long before the towers were destroyed on 9/11. 

In the first chapter, the scene shifts to Dublin, Ireland. There, two brothers, John Andrew Corrigan, called Corrigan, and Ciaran, live with their mother. Their father abandoned the family years ago. After their mother’s death, Corrigan begins studying for the priesthood. He eventually drops out of the seminary and instead joins an order of monks in Belgium. The Order assigns him to work and live in New York City. 

Corrigan’s brother, Ciaran, is wounded in an IRA bombing in Dublin and decides to join his brother in America. He arrives in New York to find Corrigan living in a housing project in the South Bronx where his ministry centers on local prostitutes and the elderly in a nearby nursing home. Corrigan’s life is complicated by his growing affection for Adelita, a nurse at the nursing home, and his vows to God to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience.  The police round up Corrigan’s local prostitutes, and he goes to court with them. On the way back, he and Jazzlyn, one of the streetwalkers, are killed in a car crash.

Chapter Two shifts the setting and cast of characters. Claire is hosting a breakfast gathering at her posh apartment on Park Avenue for a group of mothers who have all lost sons in the Vietnam War. Claire’s favorite in the group is Gloria, a black woman who lives in the South Bronx project where Corrigan resides.  Marcia, one of the women, has seen the tightrope walker in the air between the twin towers. There was a news helicopter at the scene, which has triggered Marcia since her son died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. 

The next characters to be introduced are Blaine and Lara, two twenty-somethings who have been partying in the city. They are the ones who hit Corrigan’s van and caused the fatal car crash. Lara, feeling guilty, goes to the hospital and brings Corrigan’s personal effects to his brother and goes to Jazzlyn’s funeral. There, she sees Jazzlyn’s mother, Tillie, who has been let of jail just for the funeral. Ciaran and Lara have a drink together, but nothing further happens between them at this point.

Next, there is an interlude in the novel describing the tightrope walker’s elaborate practice and preparations for the Twin Towers event.

Book Two (Chapter 4) follows a young man who photographs “tags”, the elaborate graffiti designs sprayed on the subway cars and subway tunnel walls. The connection to the main story line is a photograph that the fictional photographer takes of the tightrope walker. 

Chapter 5 transports the reader to California, where a group of young hackers is following the story of the Twin Towers walk. They use computers to find phones in New York, and persuade a woman in a law office near the World Trade Center to describe what is happening with the walker.

Chapter 6 is a stream-of-consciousness depiction of Tillie’s thoughts and feelings in jail.

She reviews her life as a hooker and a drug addict and especially regrets how she allowed and encouraged her daughter to get into the same troubles. She mentions killing herself many times: her plan is to hang herself from one of the pipes in her cell.

Book Three (Chapter 7) presents the events on the day of the tightrope walk and the arrest of the hookers from the point of view of the judge who hears both cases in court. The judge is Solomon Soderberg, husband of Claire from Chapter 2. He gives Tillie a harsh jail sentence, but spares the celebrity walker with a fine of a penny a floor or $1.10 for the 110 stories of the World Trade Center.

Chapter 8 is narrated by Adelita, the nurse who fell in love with Corrigan. She remembers the “Thursday before the crash,” when they finally slept together, consummating their love. She has the memories of that time with her love, precious and enduring.

Chapter 9 follows Gloria, one of the women who lost sons in Vietnam, as she leaves Claire’s home on Park Avenue and tries to walk home to the South Bronx. She gets mugged and hurt, goes back to Claire’s. Later, she sees the two girls left behind by Jazzlyn, the young prostitute who was killed in the car crash. She persuades Child Services to let her take the girls in and raises the orphans as her own.

Chapter 10 takes place 32years later in 2006. This part of the story is narrated by Jaslyn (who changed the spelling of her name), one of the two girls adopted by Gloria. Jaslyn works for a nonprofit in Arkansas. She has come to New York to visit her adoptive mother’s best friend, Claire, who is dying. The book ends with the young woman lying down next to this woman from her past. “The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough”. (p.349)