Twist
A Novel
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3.7 • 25 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “urgent [and] ingenious” (The New York Times Book Review) novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean—from the New York Times bestselling author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
“The spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over the text, but here the heart of darkness lies at the bottom of the ocean.”—Salman Rushdie
“Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.”
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.
Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. 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.
When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?
Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
An author and journalist searches for connection in the internet age in this insightful triumph of a novel. Author Anthony Fennell is struggling to invigorate his slumping career when he meets John Conway, the mission director on a boat that finds and repairs fiber-optic cables deep undersea. Fascinated by John and his beautiful girlfriend, Zanele, Anthony accompanies him on an expedition—only to learn that there is much more to the wily captain than meets the eye. Irish author Colum McCann’s mastery of language is on full display here, taking us on a voyage that works both as a high-seas adventure and an allegory for the fragility of relationships in the age of instant communication. His prose manages to be simultaneously playful and dire, especially his descriptions of the violent storms and deep chasms of the ocean, which verge on the poetic. Once again McCann proves why his is one of Ireland’s preeminent voices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
National Book Award winner McCann (Apeirogon) offers an intriguing story of a journalist sent to report on the complex work of repairing the underwater cables that carry the world's information. Anthony Fennell, 48, a struggling novelist and heavy drinker, flies to Cape Town to board a cable repair ship, hoping the assignment will boost his stagnating career. He meets fellow Irishman John Conway, the chief of mission, and John's girlfriend, Zanele Ombassa, a promising Black South African actor who soon leaves for England to be in a play. Conway will be dead not long after the reporting assignment ends, Fennell tells the reader, and his narration amounts to an attempt to make sense of what happened after they embarked to fix a series of cable breaks. The mission grows particularly fraught when Conway determines that a cable is broken at the bottom of an underwater canyon, far too deep to dive, and attempts to recover it with a grappling hook ("A trip to Hades armed with a piece of steel," as Fennell describes the operation). Conway then learns Zanele has been attacked onstage and is in the hospital, but cannot leave the ship because they're too far from shore. McCann skillfully ratchets up the uneasiness on board and later adds a provocative twist, taking the novel in an unexpected direction. Readers will be dazzled.
Customer Reviews
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