Tuesday, January 12, 2010

"Let the Great World Spin"

Thoughts? First impressions?

What did you think of the writing? What did you think of the narrative style of switching perspectives every chapter?
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10 comments:

kc said...

At first I found it rather slow and uneven, especially the part in NYC, which seemed drawn out compared with the more lyrical part in Ireland when the brothers were kids.

But later I appreciated the NYC part more as a foundation for the whole. I became really hooked in the second part with the Park Avenue story, and I thought it got better and better from there.

Sometimes narrative switches can seem tiresome, almost cliche, but I thought this one worked well. The connections between stories were believable, and, when you think about it, it could have been impossibly difficult (and forced) to write this novel from a single point of view. I mean, a third-person omniscient narrator presiding over the whole could have felt pretty contrived, maybe even preachy. And using the first person throughout would have sharply limited the scope. The way it reads to me now is as a collection of diverse narratives about a shared time and place.

It's kind of mind-boggling to think of how many lives are affected by something like a fatal car crash.

9:44 PM, January 12, 2010
Erin said...

I had the same feeling about the first part in NYC. It seemed slow and pointless. I was much more engaged when the Park Avenue story started.

I'm always a little skeptical of stories about a hundred diverse people who wind up being connected in some way. It all seems a little too coincidental. But this didn't, for some reason. It was believable.

I think the narrative switches worked well for the story, but there were some narrators I liked more than others and sometimes wished we could go back to their stories.

11:25 AM, January 14, 2010
cl said...

I also found the startup slow, but I appreciated at the end that a lot of time was spent on Corrigan because he would die so early in the novel when everything that followed connected back to him and his convoluted mission. Plus I had the sense Ciaran would be our narrator throughout and found him a touch too removed to want to commit to reading it all through his eyes. (Except for falling for Tillie and her memorized Rumi. Ha. Then I liked him.) But as the story fell together the beginning made more sense -- all the time connecting the dots we'd reunite with later in the novel.

7:12 PM, January 14, 2010
cl said...

And all the details about the projects were a little hard to mull through, but then introducing Park Avenue in the next sequence made it all more vivid. And when Claire went there to see Gloria, I already had mentally filled in the blanks from the first section. Does that make sense? Both the characters and NYC as a setting were introduced in the start. Which I think is what kc means about appreciating NYC as a foundation.

7:14 PM, January 14, 2010
cl said...

Erin, I enjoyed it. I also liked that the end was inconclusive but sort of looking up. And I feared a big, contrived 9-11 scenario would end the story and am so glad it didn't go there.

7:16 PM, January 14, 2010
kc said...

I think "a touch too removed" is a good description of Ciaran's narration, cl. Maybe that's why the first section of the book didn't grab me so much. I never felt like I had a great handle on who he was or what motivated him or what he cared about or even what he looked like or why he became so immersed in his brother's life in the Bronx.

9:48 AM, January 15, 2010
Erin said...

Yes, that was my problem with Ciaran, too. I was never sure what his motivation was. He seemed to exist as an observer of his brother's life.

What did you guys think of his winding up marrying the artist woman?

11:11 AM, January 15, 2010
cl said...

Erin,
Ciarnan marrying the artist's wife was kind of contrived for me. I guess it wraps up how she atones for her guilt and gives Ciaran a reason for having sought out his brother. She was useful for the POV of Ciaran at the funeral. But I still never really got a good sense of him. Like he went on to become wealthy and sort of aimless. If you follow all the loose ends of the story to their completion, that's the one that seemed to just unravel a bit.

12:47 PM, January 25, 2010
kc said...

Yeah, we never got to see them jell as a couple. They end up together by freaky means, then years later we see them married and living in Ireland, without any kind of sense really of why they're a pair, except for the freakiness that brought them together. Did they have a bunch in common? Why are they together, exactly?

2:55 PM, January 25, 2010
Erin said...

That's how I felt, too. We barely got to know who Ciaran was, and then we didn't get to see them become a couple, so it was a little hard for me to buy.

6:32 PM, January 26, 2010

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