When an alcoholic journalist with writer’s block takes an assignment to cover the little known, but critical work of underwater divers who repair the cables that transport 90% of the data in the world wide internet traffic, he meets and becomes fascinated with the enigmatic leader of the repair crew. This is a spare, beautifully constructed character study with just enough mystery to keep the pages turning. McCann’s prose is masterfull as usual.

I enjoyed this book so much ….
….treasured my own intimacy with it so much, I’d like to preserve the experience for myself. At the same time, I hope everyone in the world loves it as much as me.
It took me three weeks to finish.
It’s only 256 pages long.
It ‘could’ be read in a day or two …..but I genuinely was in awe.
For several days I got deeply (ha!,no pun intended), interested to learn more - understand more free-diving, about underwater cables, fiber optic technology, how they are made…how they work, how a ship uses a plow to create a trough in the ocean floor ….and the ways it gets buried in the sand by underwater currents, etc.
I nagged my husband — wanting him to feed answers to all my questions. He helped… but ultimately I took a few days to do my own google research. I had a great time!

Thank you Colum! You rocked my world with *Twist*. (perfect title). You inspired me, taught me, and allowed me to reflect about things that are most important to me: people and our relationships ….the life of love and struggles we share alone and together. This is now my new favorite book by Colum McCann.

“Twist” ‘is complete by itself ….nobody needs to visit google or nag your spouse with technological questions.
But, isn’t it a treat when ‘sometimes’ a book excites us, intrigues us, to want to learn more?
Sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph—with elements of the heart, fractured stories weaved together, wonderful and haunting layered heart-pounding adventures- mysteries with the absorbing complex characters — *Twist* is wonderful …brilliant….with extraordinary depth and beauty.

More tidbits ….
In January 2019, Anthony Fennell, had just turned forty-eight. He boarded the Georges Lecointe, a cable repair vessel. As a struggling novelist and occasional playwright, he felt a relief to step away from the “burden of invention” onto a ship that would take him out to the west coast of Africa, a place he’d never been before. (descriptions as a newbie arriving in South Africa were very visual- I felt as if I was there).
“The city’s beauty stung my lungs, but its adjacent poverty pierced me too”.
Anthony thought he would spend a few weeks on a ship, then return to Dublin and write a long form journalistic-piece.
It wasn’t exactly all that simple.

Georges Levointe- was one of the busiest cable repair vessels in the world…..a telecommunications company in Brussels.
It held the record for the number of deep sea jobs in the Atlantic ocean.
The Congo River had been flooded for weeks. The entire Congo Basin was saturated.
The spill triggered mudslides.
Entire villages were washed away in the storms.
Pages of descriptions were heartbreaking/devastating!
Given the recent tragedy of Hurricane Helene .. and other more recent destructions from severe natural disasters, it was painfully-real to absorb this daunting history.

A little about the characters…and a love story of sorts….
Anthony Fennell (great Irish protagonist by the way), connects with John Conway: (commander on a cable repair ship), whose partner was Zanele.(an actress heading off to London to be in a theater production). She was bringing her young twins, Thami and Imka with her. Conway was staying back in Africa….and would be heading out to sea.
Conway wanted Anthony to write an article about Zanele.
“He was so in love with her that he wanted people to see her, meet her, talk with her, listen to her, be in her presence”.
Anthony was convinced that Conway and Zanele loved each other …. but it seemed like there were cracks in their relationship.

I won’t say much more ….but could. (lol) …
Geee….I could never write a book. It’s hard enough trying to write a review….
There is much to enjoy: characters with dreadlocks or blue hair. A character with seashell tattoos on her wrists, grave-markers, spectacular things in the ocean, background history, regrets, memories, promises, lies, mystery, head-pounding scary scenes, and many thought-provoking moments.

“You can ache for years and not even know you’ve been aching. The ache has gone so deep that it seems to come from another life, one not even remembered anymore. Then, when it spins back up in your mind, you can choose to shove it back down into the territory of the deeper ache, or you can try to coax it into some sort of meaning”.

Even the acknowledgments were beautiful!

Colum McCann . . .
…An internationally best selling author….
….A member of The American Academy of Arts And Letters.
….A member of The Irish association of artists Aosdana. (people who have produced a distinguished body of work of genuine originality).
….etc…. many other worthy awards!!!
….Colum McCann lives with his family in New York.

I love this book!
I love Colum McCann’s writing!!!

Thank you …… soooo much!!!

My third read by the author. Can't quite get to the five-stars with him, though this one comes close.
Twist is a story of a diver and underwater cable repairman who goes rogue and a reporter who tries to figure out what happened.
It's a fairly straight-forward, simple plot because this novel is about the trees rather than the forest. McCann spends the entire time zooming in instead of out, so that you get the most minute details of the characters' lives and activities, which can be interesting and very immersive but also somewhat exhausting.
The narrative is very Gatsby-esque in style, with the main character, a rather unexciting reporter, orbiting a much-more exciting and unknowable Conway, the mystery man. And for all that orbiting and speculation, no matter how detailed, Conway remains largely just that - a mystery. A bit frustratingly so, but also a great reminder that in real life, it's very difficult and sometimes impossible to truly know another person.
Knowing its strengths and shortcomings, the novel smartly keeps it brief at just 256 pages.
The real star here is the beauty of language. McCann's writing is devastatingly beautiful, and it alone makes this a worthy read. Thanks Netgalley.

There were moments of profound beauty in this novel. I can't tell you what it means to me and I won't tell you about the story. Go on. Find out.

Yet another winner from Colum. Complex story and characters, with a bit of mystery thrown in. About the ties that bind us together, and sometimes tear us apart.

There is no doubt McCann can write, it’s lush and vivid and this book had me highlighting line after line. My issue lies in the storytelling. This book started off really strong I was excited to read about the underwater cables and how reliant we are on them for connecting us globally, this was a totally fresh and new concept to me, and I thought we were headed into a story about how humans and technology have evolved. Unfortunately this story took a bit of a hard pivot half way through and became about a man name Conway and a series of incidences and the journalist, Anthony, our narrator who seeks to understand the why. This didn’t interest me and I never felt like we got any really good or interesting answers or a real deep sense of these characters and I finished it with a bit of harumph feeling.

I have always wanted to read this author. His prose is quite lush and I think I might like it, but my brain just can't focus on it at the moment. I may try again before the pub date.

When you open a book by a true literary artist, you remember immediately how beautiful literature reads. Almost like slipping into the most expensive, highest thread count sheets, Colum McCann has mesmerized us with a story that no one had thought to explore. A journalist looking for inspiration and desperate enough to travel on a ship sent to repair fiberoptic cables undersea.

Anthony Fennell, the Irish journalist travels to South Africa to meet the men who are pirate-like in their lifestyle. He is able to catch a ride on a shpw and follows a captain-like man for his article. What he learns, leads us to what we are all waiting for - the twist.

Grab this exquisitely wrought book, and travel with Fennell to a place that can control what we are all addicted too - information.

#randomhouse #twist #colummccann

This was an interesting book overall, but it was still pretty dry. It was pretty technical about the work the people were doing, so that was a bit too focused on the wrong things. I think the beginning started off strong, the middle was so dull, and then the ending was picking up pace again which was good.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

This was a strong story and enjoyed the concept and how the plot was told. The characters felt like this was their story that needed to be told and enjoyed how they worked in this universe. Colum McCann has a great writing style and it worked with the genre.

This was quite the interesting read. It started off pretty captivating but somewhere in the middle it seems to drag on. The last 20% or so picked up again and kept me engaged through the end. The writing style is pretty unique. At one point, there’s a single sentence that stretches over nearly 3 pages on my kindle. I’d be interested to read more works from this author but I know to pace myself to avoid feeling underwhelmed.

An alcoholic, disenfranchised journalist, Anthony Fennell, ventures to South Africa and is tasked to write an article about submarine telecommunications cable repair while shadowing Chief of Mission (director of repair), John Conway, on their search and repair mega ocean vessle. While on assignment he gets to know the mysterious Conway, also a free diver, and becomes acquainted with his partner, attention-seeking actress Zanelle.

The subject of fiber optic repair, the mending of fine glass tubes, no bigger than a human hair and encompassed in a tube about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, was absolutely fascinating and illuminating. The submarine telecommunications cables are responsible for the majority of internet traffic worldwide, made up of approximately 1.5 million kilometers lying as deep as 4 kilometers down on the ocean floor. The laborious intricacies in repairing these severed cables, which disrupt or halt data travel to neighboring countries, is staggering. I ignorantly have never thought about this underwater infrastructure which is critical to our daily life.

Saying all this probably makes it sounds like a dry book, but it absolutely was not. Woven throughout is a theme of broken and taught relationships and Anthony’s struggle for sobriety and a more positive evolution. He also examines the state of our oceans. Masterly written, with gripping tension throughout the story and a smooth flow. I highly recommend this book. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for giving me the opportunity to read this advanced copy.