A few years ago, I read my first Colum McCann novel, which I loved, and now, having finished his latest, Twist, I see similarities between the two that help clarify what I find compelling about his work. He is a writer who is drawn to some of mankind's most difficult challenges: brokering a peace in Ireland (TransAtlantic), flying a two-seater, open cockpit plane across the Atlantic (TransAtlantic), and in this latest one, repairing breaks in the cables laid on the ocean floor that carry the world's digital communications. There is also, of course, his 2009 National Book Award winning novel, Let the Great World Spin that uses Philippe Petit's 1974 performance on a tightrope strung between the World Trade Towers as its focal point. All these challenges involve skill, endurance, and massive amounts of persistence and courage. This is the way McCann gets to the emotional core, which in Twist, is the tension in human relationships—the tenuousness of our connections with each other, the hopes and disappointments. Interestingly, the question that hovers over these challenges—will it succeed—is the same question that accompanies the give and take of friendship and romance. Perhaps that's why McCann is attracted to the theme of challenge. By placing characters in an extremity where their senses, emotions, and basic humanity is close to a breaking point, he reveals us at our most empathetic and creative.
Twist is narrated in the first person by a peripatetic Irishman named Anthony Fennell, a writer with a failed marriage, an abandoned son, years clouded by drugs and alcohol, and two "minor" literary successes. Working as a journalist, Fennell goes to South Africa where he hopes to board a ship that repairs cable breaks. The idea of repair appeals to him, and as he collects information for his new assignment, he hopes that some time aboard a ship will repair the breaks in his own life.
The existence of these cables is not, as you might think, a fiction. Who knew that the video call you had with your friend in London travelled through undersea fiberoptic cables to reach your computer in mere seconds? These cables are what civilization depends on for sending and retrieving information around the world. Sometimes they become severed and that is when the few ships that specialize in repair—a delicate, computer assisted operation performed by a highly specialized workforce—locate the break and mend it. The deepest parts of the ocean, the unknowable canyons that rise from the ocean floor which the cables traverse, is the setting for much of the novel.
All of this context is revealed in the first chapter and since Fennell is an outsider, new to Cape Town, new to boats, new to cable repair, and as a journalist, is observing everything very closely, we have an intimate view. But this isn't the only thing that makes the first chapter so compelling. Fennell has a keen eye and a mind that questions and speculates. He sees mystery everywhere and his overactive sensitivities find it even in what, at first glance, appear to be ordinary things.
The first chapter reels me in with broad uncertainties—when will a cable break, how long will Fennell have to be at sea—and then it focuses on more particular questions when Fennell meets Conway, the joint commander of the ship that will soon carry him into the unknown. Conway is the man Fennell hopes to shadow on board, but his first impressions point to a difficulty that will manifest more fully later. Though Conway is friendly, he is also hidden.
"I had seen men like him before, troubled and angelic all at once. One evening...in New York, I had watched Jeff Buckley in a downtown Irish bar leaning in the microphone to sing Leonard Cohen's "Halleluajah." ...Conway had that secret chord, the sort of man who was there and not there at the same time (12).
The "secret chord" is charisma and Fennell is forever trying to pin down the man who dwells underneath it. It's a high stakes hide and seek that begins in the first chapter when they almost miss each other in a hotel bar. When they connect Conway says,
"I was just about to leave, to be honest[.]"
"I texted you."
"I don't really like using my phone."
I stifled a laugh. I am not sure what I had expected from a man whose job it was to be in joint command of an internet repair ship, the chief of mission no less, but I certainly thought he would be older, grayer, and at the very least have an aura of the smartphone about him. But here he was, a creature from the unplugged side, or as unplugged as he could get.
"You use a flip phone?"
"Only when I have to."
"Why?"
"Oh," he said, "I like machines that work" (13).
The disconnect leaps out. A man who keeps the world's internet running smoothly chooses an antiquated device for his own use?
As Fennell watches Conway leave the hotel he sees it this way: "At the arched exit, the shadows overtook him" (19).
Conway's ability to disappear is something the reader will see throughout the novel and is part of Fennell's struggle to understand him. But the phrase that commands my attention more than "into shadows" is "arched exit." Conway doesn't just duck through a doorway. This is an arch, an elegant and cathedral-like shape. An arch is a feat of balance and suspension. Think of the bricks that make an arch—how are they held up?
This is the question Fennell will ask about Conway when he disappears into the shadows again. But by then, it will be a far riskier, more political purpose that lures Conway into the beyond.
McCann, Colum. Twist. New York: Random House, 2025.
Filed under: Creating mystery in the first chapter