Is History moving forward in a progressive manner, or is it circular, repeating itself in an endless cycle of violence and counter-violence?
Colum McCann's novel, Let the Great World Spin, seems to raise this question as it tries to deal with the 9/ 11th trauma by referring back to the Vietnam War.
Through an earlier incident that also involves the now famous Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, McCann aspires to dissect the different layers of life in New York. Though the text has been called a novel about New York by many critics, a closer look at the novel reveals that temporal concerns are intertwined with spatial ones to create a very intricate narrative. It thus helps the reader expand his experience of the present to include the past and the future in one circular totality that deems the livable space open for a (re)negotiation of suffering and pain in such traumatic times.