It was the new World Trade Center then, still under construction in 1974, the talk of New York, when on that muggy morning in August, Philippe Petit took to the sky. Suspended on a wire between the Towers, 110 stories above the ground, suspending all disbelief, he walked, he ran, he skipped a beat, dancing between life and death.

“Those who saw him hushed.” From its opening line, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCullen holds us in rapt attention to life in the big city and its people living on the edge. In ten interrelated stories, McCann's characters - prostitutes, priests, mothers, artists, computer hackers - collide and crash, and touch one another in unexpected ways.

A heart-stopping, drop-dead gorgeous must-read.