3.5-4 stars
A reporter is assigned to the story of how underwater fiber, which carries all of the world's data, is repaired when a break occurs. But the real story is the reporter's obsession with the mission chief and his life.

I thought the parts about the ocean, diving, and the cable repair process were all quite interesting. However, I didn't really get the main character's obsession with the other guy. Didn't really get the other guy, either. ;)

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book

I loved Apeirogon and had high expectations for Twist. Glimmers of what made me love Apeirogon shone through at times, but I mostly felt as though I was waiting for the story to end.

"I had a feeling that I had exhausted myself and that if I was ever going to write again, I would have to get out into the world. What I needed was a story about connection, about grace, about repair." -from narrator Anthony Fennell.

Twist by Colum McCann is a story with connection, grace, and repair. It's not an easy novel to summarize. Fennell is a journalist who's kind of untethered and gets an assignment to profile a ship based in South Africa that maintains and repairs the undersea cables supplying the world's communications. Sounds a bit dry but in McCann's hands it's anything but.

John Conway is in charge of the operation. There are shades of Heart of Darkness, Moby Dick, and Apocalypse Now in his character (and references in Fennell's tale). There's commentary on life pre and post internet, instant gratification. There's a mystery that Fennell alludes to in the beginning of his narration that is slowly revealed.

The prose is immersive. We're on the ship with the crew, in the middle of nowhere, sailing to the mission. Once again McCann propels the reader into a new world, a slice of life, in his inimitable style. I was transported.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the Advance Reader Copy. (pub date 3/25/2025).

Review published in Sunday, March 22, 2025 edition of Charleston Gazette Mail

TWIST by Colum McCann, March 25, 2025, Random House, 256 pages.

Colum McCann, author of the seminal LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN (winner of the National Book Award, and a truly fantastic book) and Oscar nominee (for a short film - I did not know this, but found out when I was double checking the page count on this novel, and on the very day after this year’s Academy Awards. For those keeping track, Adrien Brody is still talking.) returns to his Irish roots here with main character Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright. He is assigned a story about the underwater cables that carry all the information of the world in tiny, fiber optic tubes and how they sometimes break, thousands of feet below the sea: “Our lives, even the unruptured ones, bounce around on the seafloor.”

Fennell travels to the west coast of Africa, where he learns about the people who repair these cables and he meets another Irishman, John Conway, a higher-up chief of mission on a cable repair ship. Conway is an enigmatic engineer and a free diver capable of reaching unbelievable depths. He’s in love with actress Zanele, who is preparing to travel to London, where she’ll appear in a production of “Waiting for Godot” - which will serve as a metaphor for climate change.

The cable has broken due to a catastrophic flood in the Congo. It has already caused a lack of Wi-Fi and massive internet outage in South Africa. If another cable would break, all of Africa would break. Everything around the world would start to slow down. The disaster would be beyond description. The cable stretches from London to Cape Town in a canyon 13,000 feet deep. These are the things on which the world balances.

We know within the first thirty or so pages what will happen. It is how we get there that is key.

Both Fennell and Conway have issues with alcohol. For Fennell, who has a sixteen year old son in Chile he hasn’t written to in five years, “it was a time of enormous greed and foolish longing and, in the end, unfathomable isolation.”

While at sea, the men face many fundamental questions about life, love and, yes, connection. In an incredibly fractured world, are we able to make connections any longer, when things become broken, or are the ruptures permanent?

In the end there are three breaks that must be repaired, which means the crew and Fennell will be at sea for weeks, maybe longer. Days of traveling, due to each breach, then more days of looking for the breaks, which are incredibly difficult to pinpoint. As the first break is being repaired, tragedy strikes in London, but no one can leave the ship, so Conway remains.

Ultimately the book also covers narrative, and truth - the stories we tell and what is true within them. It reads almost like a thriller and is another excellent book by McCann.

I'm struggling with how to review this book. The subject matter was generally interesting and taught me things I was unaware of, but not particularly exciting. The characters were decent, complicated but not especially noteworthy. But the writing. There was something about the writing that took what I found to be a mediocre subject matter (at least for me) and turned it into this collection of words and sentences that awaken your senses and let you experience the beauty of the written word. I truly cannot explain what pulled me in about this book, because it should have fallen flat for me. Instead, I just let myself be pulled into the rhythm of the writing, and to hell with what I was actually reading about.

🚢 For my friends who enjoy ruminating about human behavior.

TWIST by Colum McCann (narrated by the author)

🎧Thanks, @prhaudio, for the #gifted audiobook #PRHAudioPartner #sponsored (Available 25 Mar 25), and Random House for the review copy via NetGalley. 8 hours, 3 minutes

A struggling novelist accepts a journalistic assignment: write about a crew who repairs the ruptured underwater cables that carry the world’s information. “Satellites accounted for only a trickle of internet traffic. The muddy wires at the bottom of the sea were faster, cheaper, and infinitely more effective than anything up there in the sky.” While onboard, he becomes fascinated with the mysterious crew leader and uses the mission and his observations as a framework to explore human nature and technology.

While I enjoyed the audiobook (it is always a treat to have fiction narrated by the author, and his Irish accent is delicious), this one is better absorbed via the eye. As an audiobook, I was swept away by the story when the focus should have been the philosophy and McCann’s exceptional prose. “The clocks fell in upon themselves. Everything went fast and everything went slow at the same time. Months leapfrogged one another. Even whole years seemed to disappear. Time stepped up behind us and delivered a blow to the back of our heads. Logic was mangled. The times were concussed.”

Very interesting book about the cables which run under the oceans all over the world and are the real support for our communication systems.
Colum McCann gives us some great insight into how these systems work, how vulnerable they might be and how dependent we are on them.
The story also focuses on the commitment of those who spend time working to find and repair the cables when there are breaks.

The story is told in 1st person which makes it feel more like a memoir than a novel. The personal lives of the crew, and the "writer" of the story are touched on as they try to do their jobs and navigate life on land.

The story was educational and thought provoking. The first person narrative wasn't my preferred technique..

Basically a book about the communication cables under the ocean and repairing them. This takes place in the ocean off South Africa. An Irish journalist, Anthony, who meets up with a fellow Irishman there who works on the ships that repairs these cables. He meets John and his partner Zanele before heading out on the ship with him.

This wasn't the propulsive mystery I had hoped for and the ending was not satisfying, but the writing is very literary for those who enjoy a literary story of something not written about - these huge cables under the ocean and those who dive down to repair them.

My thanks to Net Galley and Random House for an advanced copy of this e-book.

It is very difficult to write a review on a narrative of a writer not quite writing a book. If you hadn't known the technology of intercontinental communication cables at the bottom of the sea, this narrative is fascinating if you ever wondered how our near instantaneous telephone and email/texts get across the world so quickly.

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist, takes to the high seas in a ship tasked with finding breaks in the cables, and repairing them, oftentimes thousands of feet below. John Conway, the Program Manager for the repairs is a free diver and engineer. Fennell, an landlubber, of course gets seasick but develops relationships with many of the crew in order to learn more about their jobs.

It is a pretty quick read with a major twist after Conway's disappearance as Covid-19 hits.

No spoilers ...

Thank to Netgalley for the pre-release copy, the book was published yesterday.

Colum McCann can write! I am not a tech person, nor do I have an engineering type of brain, so the fact that McCann was able to keep me turning the pages of his latest novel, Twist, a literary mystery revolving around underwater cable technology and repair, is saying something. I have to admit that I didn’t know that much of our communications are transported by means of cable dwelling deep within our oceans.

Our narrator in Twist is Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist barreling into mid-life. He’s had his share of ups and downs romantically and in his career. We meet Fennell as he is offered a job to cover the repair of deep ocean cables. These are the very cables that keep our web-based lives intact. While researching for his story he meets a fascinating couple, Conway and Zenele, who leave an indelible impression upon him, which continues to drive him forward in both his work and his own understanding of the world.

In the blurb, Twist, is described as propulsive, but for me this book was much more of a slow burn. Readers should know that the first half of the book covers a lot of ground on cable fissures, locations and repairs. The plot is advancing throughout, but slowly in the first half, with a more propulsive second half. That being said, this book moves in fits and starts. Just when I would find myself drifting, McCann would add a small revelation or twist, re-engaging me.

As compelling as the descriptions of cable repair were, this book lacked character depth, especially in Conway and Zanele. Additionally, I would say that another character in the story that was missing something was the ocean itself. Since much of this book takes place in and around the ocean, more richly descriptive language and observations of what lies within our great bodies of water would have been welcome for this reader.

I liked this book. It was well-written and I learned a lot, but I wanted more. If you enjoy slow burn literary fiction with a bit of a mystery, and want to learn more about the hardware which enables us to live within a global society, Twist by Colum McCann, might be the read for you.

3.5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and and Random House for an ARC of Twist by Colum McCann, in exchange for my honest review.

Based on the premise, I thought I would enjoy this so much more. If It had been longer, I may have put it down. It is just a slow-paced read without a lot of action. The story is so interesting; I think I would like it better as a non-fiction book about the underwater cables.

Colum McCann hooked me from page one of Twist, his latest novel. Opening with the sentence “We are all shards in the smash-up,” the narrator goes on to say that lives may make brief, even tender, connections but will “inevitably collide and splinter.” The narrator talks of writing the story of John A. Conway while also telling part of his own and of someone named Zanelle.

Although hired as a journalist to write the story of an undersea fiberoptics repair mission aboard the South Africa based ship, the George Lacointe, of which John Conway is the chief in charge of repair, the narrator, Anthony Fennell, discovers a much larger human story, one that in many ways comes all too close to the personal problems that destroyed his once promising start as an Irish novelist and playwright. Readers quickly realize that Fennell is writing Conway’s story from some point in the future. Thinking back to their first meeting. another with Conway’s black South African girlfriend Zanelle, Zanelle’s departure for acting work in England. the effects of a broken undersea cable on internet communication, the difficulty of finding and repairing the break. Fennell’s other story is one of human loneliness and personal communication difficulties faced by those on board the George Lecointe, the usually calm but deeply broken John Conway foremost among them.

Fennell ponders how to organize the many scattered details gathered over time in order to give coherence to his narrative, please the person who hired him as well as the Belgian company in charge of the repair mission, and keep his promises to others involved while also struggling to cope with his personal demons.

With occasional literary and film allusions ranging from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot and Martin Sheen’s role in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, author Column McCann grapples with connection and disconnection, communication and communication breakdown, brokenness and repair, broken cables, broken hearts, and broken lives.

The words “What hath God wrought” came down to Samuel Morse from the Bible’s Book of Numbers as a statement of God’s acts and power and became the first message Samuel Morse sent by telegraph to signal this new wonder. Repair Chief John A. Conway repeats the phrase during his mission to repair an internet cable, and the question is asked if the words might now be a question rather than a statement. “Everything gets fixed,” Conway responds in part, “and we all stay broken.” In his commingling of contemporary technology and life, Colum McCann forces readers to think.

Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken

Irish writer Anthony Fennell has hit a lull in his career and is looking for inspiration to get him out of his rut. When an editor he has worked with suggests he write a story about the underwater fiber optic cables that enable the world to communicate he is initially less than enthused with the idea. but the editor is persistent and in the end he agrees to do it. He travels to the west coast of Africa where the cable repair vessel the Georges Lecointe is docked, awaiting its next assignment. He meets the ship's chief of mission, engineer John Conway, who the ship's owners have decided will serve as his guide to the world of cable repair. Anthony is fascinated by Conway as well as by Conway's partner Zenele who is mother to two young children and a rising actress about to set off for a production in England. After she and the children depart for England, the Georges Lecointe is summoned to repair multiple cable breaks near the Congo River which appear to have been caused by an underwater landslide. Something happens to Zenele while Conway is isolated on the ship and Conway, already tense about the strains in their relationship and now unable to protect her, is set off, He disappears. leaving Anthony to piece together who Conway was and where he went even as he ponders his own life and what changes he should make.
Twist is a complex narrative which on the surface is the story of a compelling man (Conway) whose actions are chronicled by another man (Anthony) who has become fascinated, maybe even obsessed, by him. With a steady pace and palpable tension, the story explores the ways in which people connect (or fail to do so), our relationship with the ocean, and how history plays into modern day problems. Author Colum McCann is a gifted writer, using vivid imagery to make real the world in which Anthony finds himself. Conway is also a talented diver, and the freedom he experiences when he is underwater stands in stark contrast to the surface world in which he struggles to connect. Anthony's focus on Conway to a degree diminishes his own power as a character, and while Zenele's story of growing up under apartheid and facing hostility in England is compelling, I wished I could have learned more about her as she is only present on the page at certain points of the story, This is a story that deals with powerful emotions and explores many of today's issues, with well-crafted writing and a central character who intrigues the reader from beginning to end. Fans of the author will relish this latest outing, as might readers of Michael Ondaatje, E, Annie Proulx and David Mitchell. It is complex, at times its artistry feels a bit heavy handed, but it is a thought-provoking tale to be carefully savored. My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for allowing me early access in exchange for my honest review.

Anthony Fennell, a forty-eight year old struggling novelist, occasional playwright, and an accomplished drinker, reflects on January 2019 when he boarded the Georges Lecointe, a cable repair vessel owned by a telecommunications company in Brussels, that would take him to the west coast of Africa. Fennell had envisioned that he would spend a few weeks on the ship and then return to Dublin to write a commissioned long-form journalistic piece and to “shake out the cobwebs.” “What I needed was a story about connection,” Fennell tells the reader, as he takes the assignment when the novel opens, “about grace, about repair.”

Fennell had assumed that “the information we got just flew through the air around us, that it was satellites that carried all our lives, our messages, our signals to one another. Most of us never thought of information coming through cold, wet wires under the sea.” Then he meets fellow Irishman John Conway, the chief of mission, the man whose job it was to be in command of the internet repair ship fixing cables that had been laid a hundred and fifty years ago. Fennell learns that Conway is a talented engineer and an accomplished free diver, but Conway’s friends point out that he “has many missing years,” and “aspires downward.” Fennell briefly meets Conway’s partner, Zanele Ombassa, a South African actor and environmentalist who was leaving for the U.K. with their children to perform in a theater production in Brighton, and who achieves a new level of fame after a vicious attack while she was on stage.

After a fraught few days in port when Fennell was wrecked with seasickness, the ship steams out of Cape Town with a crew of fifty-three multi-ethnic men. McCann brings us on board the ship where we experience the difficulty of the work and the scale and majesty of the sea – and humanity’s capacity to destroy it. As the crew trawl the bottom of the sea searching for the broken cable, they pull up new forms of sea life and Styrofoam and other man-made detritus. And the digital content streaming through the cables is often inane or dangerous.

McCann’s subject is timely. Experts have been warning for a while that our globalized lives depend on these links to a degree that few of us have considered. Greenland, a target of the current administration, is a waypoint for communication cables that cross the Atlantic and has been attacked by Russian ghost ships that drag their anchors across the sea floor.

McCann’s elegant prose tells the tale that Fennell promised at the outset of the novel of repair and connection. It is a melancholy and introspective story with a destination that is unexpected. McCann’s fans will be satisfied with his latest novel. Thank you Random House and Net Galley for another beautiful book from a master.

Many think: cloud: sky. It makes sense that the cloud works from a satellite somewhere. That’s what I figured before reading this book.

Right away, the main character, Anthony Fennell, gives readers the realization that satellites account for just a small part of the internet as it’s slow and expensive. The internet (data) mostly travels to and from continents through fiber optic cables on the bottom of the ocean floors.

Fennell was working on an article and managed to spend time on a ship that was headed to a place where the cable was broken. He wanted to know everything about John Conway, not only about his work as the chief of mission but also with his love for Zanele.

Readers had a full view of the three main characters that were involved. There were conversations that made you think about planet-related issues and relationships. His heart-to-heart exchanges were deep and set up to stimulate hidden truths.

This was a story that stirred up all sorts of questions and some were answered about how the cables work. It caused curiosity and made me search for more information on the internet – the internet that we are all accustomed to working quickly all the time. If it’s off for a couple of hours, we panic.

There are good lines in this book that are keepers meant to share. It leaves us with thoughts that are bound.to change our views. In the Acknowledgements, I smiled when Colum McCann thanked the readers first with a meaningful message before a long list to others.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of March 25, 2025.

Colum McCann writes beautifully, and if a reader is looking for a pensive, character-driven, literary read, they are likely to enjoy Twist. Hence the four-star rating.

Unfortunately, I was in a headspace where I really needed more pace and a more plot-driven story, so I would rate my enjoyment of this book at about three stars.

However, I will certainly recommend it to literary fiction readers, and I wouldn't be surprised if I enjoy it more upon rereading it when I have the mental energy for it.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this digital ARC in advance of publication.

Author Colum McCann is a wonderful writer; he can create scenes, places and characters well. When place and character intertwine, he is especially good; the reader can easily picture what that character is thinking in that place. TWIST ended up being a tale that didn’t grip me as much as McCann’s earlier work. There is an underlying sadness and isolation to it that left me uncomfortable; so the plot itself just didn’t engage me.I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest novel by Colum McCann. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the task of fixing these cables when things go wrong. . He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

I thought this subject matter of this book was fascinating – a look into the cables running under the oceans that carry the fiberoptic communication lines that allow us to use the internet and our cellphones. Do any of us normal mortals ever think about all that goes on behind the scenes to allow us to use our devices? What happens when they break? But the main attraction in this book is the beautiful writing of Colum McCann. It was so immersive and atmospheric that it pulls the reader into another world; it’s tense and slow at the same time. Plus, there are multiple mysteries and themes – can we fix our past? How imperative is communication to life itself?

We are, indeed–you, me, us–shards in the smash up. from Twist by Colum McCann

“What I needed was a story about connection, about grace, about repair,” the narrator tells us. As a writer Fennel has run dry; as a man he needs to dry out; as a father he has failed. Fennell agreed to write a story about repairing severed cables under the ocean, the real ‘cloud’ of our communication system. He travels to South Africa where the repair ship waits for the call of a break.

The head of the operation to repair the broken cables is an accomplished free diver, Conway, who invites Fennell to his home. It is obvious that he loves his partner, Zanele, an actress disgusted by humanity’s destruction of the world.

Fennell is intrigued by Conway. He fixes the cables but doesn’t like using a cell phone. What he loves is diving, the floating in space with his mind shut down and his heart slowed, the becoming “something else altogether,” “a liberation from himself.” The descriptions of freediving are startling and mesmerizing in their detail. The cable job is just maps and buttons, he tells Fennell.

While Conway is at sea, Zanele goes to London to act in Waiting for Godot. The call finally comes of several cable breaks that have shut down the internet and the ship goes to sea. Once at sea there is no turning back, no helicopter rescue, and limited communication. Conway is powerless when Zanele is attacked in London.

From the beginning, Fennel suggests a dark mystery in his tale, alluding to future events, weaving a mystery.

I was engaged by the writing, noting so many sentences and thoughts that shimmer with understanding of the human condition.

I tuned into a Conrad vibe in the story, which became obvious when McCann referenced The Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. There are references to T. S. Eliot (Prufrock and The Hollow Men) and The Great Gatsby (the green light).

He wasn’t of this world. He wanted the elsewhere. from Twist by Colum McCann

Conway is an enigma, his surprising acts of destruction and disappearances a mystery. He becomes Fennel’s ‘white whale’, an unsolvable mystery. He thinks of Conway’s “lantern heart full of petrol, and when a match was put to it, it flared.”

The cable, the hair thin glass tubes that transmits communication across the world, has contributed to the evils of our times,” a time of enormous greed and foolish longing and, in the end, unfathomable isolation.” The discarded cable after the repair is separated for recycling by young salvagers.

Not everything can be repaired, Fennell realizes.

Finishing this novel, I want to read it again.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley

Real Rating: 4.5* of five<br />

Setting your repair story at the mouth of the Congo River is asking for Joseph Conrad comparisons. On a craft level, Author McCann is *streets* ahead of Conrad. On an imaginitive axis, he's at the fatal disadvantage that time presents us all. Somebody else did it a century-plus ago. That isn't always a problem since, after all, nothing's original after <i>The Tale of Gilgamesh</i>.

This story is focused more on Kurtz, sorry Conway, and his South African actress lover Zanele, than on Fennell the journalist covering Conway's really, really interesting role in maintaining the infrastructure we're so completely dependent on for modern life. I was captivated by the bits of the story that featured the underwater cables and their care, the hazards that beset them, and the clever, dangerous ways we use to maintain and repair them.<br />
<br />
This is Colum McCann's m&eacute;tier: Metaphor. Underwater cables carrying all the world's information, all the connections between people, the vast accumulation of meaning enabled by them; the threat to them in the story is natural and requires huge, dangerous effort by multiple people; the man whose job it is to tell us about it is, unsurprisingly, in crisis of the same sort.<br />
<br />
Because Fennell is the PoV man doesn't make him the center of the action, necessarily, and the argument that Conway's the main character is possible to make. All the action centers Conway. Every physical thing done of any consequence is done by Conway. His are the skills...freediving! ZOMG...that will repair the vital cable. Fennell has to learn all this data, and so we have an excuse to learn it with him. He is us...Conway is the action hero doing the stuff to make us more comfortanle, safer, in our cocoons. Fennell is there to tell us his story.<br />
<br />
And Fennell himself? He's got the whole world in his head. He needs the same repairs as the cables. His ex, and his son, can tell you stories of the man who tells stories and yet has no emotional facility; no facility at moving the emotional data through the wildly pressurized cables of his emotional system out into the places they're needed. On this assignment, he's doing everything he can from miles away to understand and present to his audience the facts of the situation when, in reality, he's trying to explain how communication is invisible until it's broken. This is a central-to-life human fact.<br />
<br />
What makes the men at the center of this story do what they do is women. That's a dreary, heteronormatove reality. The actress...note her profession's essential artifice...that Conway and, though less blatantly, Fennell desire is a professional dissimulator who presents emotional realities in an unreal, fictional way to illuminate their truth.<br />
<br />
Acting is Orwellian...lying to create truth. Like writing, an artifice, an epicyclic system humans have created.<br />
<br />
This is McCann's m&eacute;tier. He's operating within nominal parameters. He's found a stiry to tell that makes its mark by taking all Conrad's colonial-era concerns and trimming them to fit a twenty-first century audience's blind spots. He then uses the people he's created to fulfill the arcehtypal duties once held by Marlow and his blank-spaces-on-maps fascination, Kurtz, and the largely fogettable women Kurtz acquires. It's got verve, it's stylish, and it's built on foundations that have withstood the test of time. All that is the basis of a five-star rating, surely! Yes, but...the novella lengthis notablly absent. This is a novel in full, not to say a maximalist one; but novels allow a scope that can lead the ambitious into temptation of prolixity. Author McCann's succumbed to this fiction-fever. The ending of the story is not the end of the novel. It goes on a bit. Not long enough to get boring but long enough to feel baggy as an old, well-loved cardigan.
So I'm recommending it to all y'all who want a solid, involving story that is not perfect but is delightful and successful at revivifying a classic story that can never get stale.