Colum McCann

Fiction 2023 | 240 pages

I put down my unappreciated and unfinished romance novel and picked up Twist.  By the time I reached page nine, all the privileges of reading good books came back to me.  The book was making me think. I was wondering what was happening, who was who, what mattered and why.  My brain was engaged and my body relaxed.

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to write an article about the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence ... words, images, transactions, voices ... travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at unfathomable depths.

When one such cable breaks, buffeted by an immense storm on the surface in the Congo, Fennell is able to join a cable repair ship, the Georges Lecointe, under John Conway, the Chief of Mission. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling world of technology.

The author says it takes "many long days" to find the cable, but noting the story line, I would guess it is about six weeks.  Weeks during which he travels without seeing land, with 50 other men, all prepared to participate in the repairs of the undersea cable.  The cable is so deep ... as much as 26000 feet ... no human nor human-made capsule can go get it.  Instead, a tool called a "grapnel" is used to "hook" the cable.  Yes, there are cameras for grapnels,  Still, they have to find the cable before they can hook it!  The cable is a few inches to a foot in diameter.

Once they arrived at where maps thought the cable was, it took another eight days of back and forth and back and forth to find. And then at 4 am one brilliant morning, the ship"s whistle bows.  The cable has been hooked!  They haul it to the surface and repair it.  But there is more than one break it seems.

While the technology is fascinating, the journey and the depth of character McCann has created are even more so. We learn more about Fennell than I think I know about some people in my life.  And, to a lesser degree, the obscure Conway.

After the cable is repaired, Fennell leaves the ship and lives for a wile in a small town, writing his manuscript.  I don't quite know why this section has been included.  Personally, I thought I was jarring and not hugely relevant.  But then, in the long Prologue, the sea, the technology, and the people come together again in a satisfying ending.

For most of the book I wondered ... how did this idea for a plot ever come to McCann?  Very creative and unusual.  I quite enjoyed this book, and the mix of man and sea and nd technology.  I recommend it.  Thank you, dear friend Mary!

November 2025