Book Review: ‘Twist,’ by Colum McCann

At a stroke, Fennell has lost his pole star. Conway was to be the point of his piece, its center. He thought they had a private bond.

“Twist” here modulates into a new key. While there are occasional rumored sightings of Conway, none are verified. Everything is now hearsay and supposition.

From this point on, we are reading a story told in hindsight, rich with reflection and self-analysis. “I said at the outset that if I take liberties, and leave gaps,” writes Fennell, “then so be it. There is so much that we cannot know. The mind begs for logic but gets the actual world. We fall back on invention.”

When rumors swirl that Conway is suspected of sabotaging a cable near Cairo, it is invention that Fennell summons. He constructs — creates — in sharp detail the man’s arrival in Egypt, his elaborate preparations, and then a moment-by-moment recounting of the dive itself:

Conway strips off his shirt. Pulls the waterproof backpack tight across his chest. … Eases himself off the side of the boat, careful not to dislodge the flare. … Inhales long. Exhales slowly. The water laps around him. … Eyes closed, he lets go of the boat, turns in the water, kicks down into the blue.

What are we to make of this unexpected writerly liberty? McCann, the author, has created Fennell, narrator and writer, who within his own imagined order is fictionalizing the last part of Conway’s life. It feels like a desperate effort to get to the heart of the enigma. But what drives Conway? What is it about him?

And what are we to make of the whole? McCann’s ingenious tale within a tale: Is it finally a lament for loves had and lost, or is it a Luddite’s rage against a world that has become a realm of signals? Our time, our global disarray, is everywhere implicated. There is breakage at every turn. The undersea operations — reality and trope — call to mind the Judaic concept of tikkun olam, roughly translated as “repair of the world.” It is what we are now tasked with.

TWIST | By Colum McCann | Random House | 239 pp. | $28