Towards the end of the 1980s, a certain “cultural turn” had begun to manifest itself in the field of humanistic geography. Subsequently, in his seminal survey of late capitalist culture, Fredric Jameson cited a “certain spatial turn” as one of the defining features of postmodern literature. Given this mutual pivot towards one another, geography and literary studies have since begun to collaborate, resulting in a number of interdisciplinary analyses of which Sheila Hones's Literary Geographies: Narrative Space in Let the Great World Spin is the latest example. Hones begins her study by acknowledging the “range of possible practices in literary geographies” (16). However, by focussing on a single novel, Hones endeavours to provide a “broad picture” of one possible approach to analysing the spatial and collaborative event of a popular text, namely Colum McCann's National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin (2009).

In the introduction, Hones reads the novel's central event – Philippe Petit's wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 – as an analogy for her own project; her “performance” in the “space between” literary studies and academic geography (4). Moving to chapter 2, Hones also unpacks the collaborative aspect of Petit's walk, given its reliance on extensive financial and logistical assistance. Such a collaboration provides another analogy, this time for McCann's text itself, which in turn relies on the interrelationship between author, publisher and reader. Regarding the latter, McCann has said that his novel “is completed only when it is finished by a reader” (quoted at 4), a claim that Hones finds so compelling that she cites it repeatedly over the course of her study.

However, despite the immense analogical potential of Let the Great World Spin, together with the elucidation in chapters 3 and 4 of McCann's complex textual locations, Hones remains determined not to overemphasize the selection of this particular novel. Instead she insists on it merely as a “case study” through which she can demonstrate her approach, and reveal the more widespread potential thereof. Given that this “demonstration” is her primary concern, and given that this is a book-length study which builds on Hones's articles in the field, it seems somewhat unusual not to opt rather for a range of textual examples, gesturing towards a broader set of implications and a catalogue of potential findings. There is a brief chapter on McCann's intertextuality; however, references to other texts remain largely absent throughout the study, an omission most conspicuously felt given that McCann's This Side of Brightness (1998) was precisely concerned with cartography, topography and the politics of space, again in New York City.

Returning to “space” more generally, chapter 5, “Narrative Space,” and chapter 8, “Literary Space,” wrangle with what precisely Hones might mean by this term, and indeed what her precursors might have meant. She cites a small handful of theories, predominantly those of geographer Doreen Massey, before chapters 9 and 10 consider rather “Geographies of Creation and Promotion” and “Geographies of Reception.” These include physical locations, such as the writing space (in McCann's case, a small dark room), and the reading space (“it's well known,” Hones states, “that one of the primary contexts in which reading takes place is while travelling” (154)). These also include digital spaces: Hones compares the relative properties of ebooks and audio books, as well as the politics and psychologies behind Internet reading groups.

With regard to such online conversations, Hones quotes extensively from blogs, forums and Amazon reviews – far more than she does other critics or theorists. And while these individual responses are at times intriguing, their inclusion never amounts to any sort of new angle. Even Hones herself is wary of overemphasizing the insight her own reading might offer, positing it as merely another voice in the wider collaborative cacophony. Such self-deference increases in the final chapter, Hones criticizing her “guilty evasion” of certain issues (171), her “dodging the problem” (170) of contradictory theories, so that by the end her only response to those who may be unconvinced by her work is to draw yet another parallel with Petit, reminding us that he also relied on the “collaboration” of those critical of his performance (179).

So while Hones's introductory survey is certainly replete with potential interdisciplinary starting points, her refusal to assign any weight to her theories – or indeed her chosen text – renders the study as a whole in danger of undermining its own worth. Elsewhere, Hones has been instrumental in furthering the field of literary geographies; however, the trepidation of this particular formation may ultimately prohibit it from offering any bold new steps across the abyss.