‘At a certain stage every single thing can be a sign.’ So muses artist and addict Lara, whose story is part of Colum McCann’s tale of interlinking lives during the summer a tightrope artist walked between New York’s twin towers.

Let the Great World Spin flits between a dozen-or-so characters, including a world-weary hooker, an anxious Upper East Side hostess and, indeed, the tightrope walker himself.  Whoever is focused on, you can be sure that, like Lara, they will be in a state of existential consideration.  While reading McCann’s sixth published novel, you rather feel he is determined to make a grand, wide-reaching comment on society.

He does no such thing, although he is an adept storyteller.  The award-winning author, Irish but living in New York, brings each scene – whether a Manhattan coffee morning or a devastating car crash – to life with skill and sensitivity.  He delves into the lives of his subjects, rich, poor, fortunate or damned, rooting out their every insecurity.

It comes as no surprise that McCann has previously published two story collections.  Let the Great World Spin is really a series of stand alone snapshots. The characters are believable, the prose magnificent, but the efforts to take these individual scenarios beyond their narrow universes appear desperately contrived.

His characters are penned in the present tense, so their endless reflections on the historic momentum of their time feel forced, while the dots that join these disparate individuals are awkward.  That the wealthy judge features in the same novel as the radical monk simply by witnessing  the same court case reveals less the ironies of urban society than it does an author seeking a common thread for his short stories.

McCann may be disappointed this is no vast opus on the human condition, but it should not deter readers.  Taken for what they are, the stories are little slices of brilliance.

Let the Great World Spin is published by Bloomsbury and available to buy online here.