Over four years after reading it, this book is still constantly one of the first books I recommend. It's beautifully written, with characters that are real, that I cared about. The way they circle around the central event of the tightrope, intertwining and crossing paths, but still being their own stories, is executed effortlessly. Stories with a bunch of little vignettes are often hard to pull off ([b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1406383769s/49628.jpg|1871423] didn't fare as well, for instance), but McCann does it justice.