Colum McCann said during the conversation I attended back in May that books are never completed until they are in the hands of readers who tell back what a book is about. This is essentially reception theory, which, referencing Wikipedia, says that readers interpret the meaning of what they read based on their individual cultural backgrounds and life experiences. In other words, “the meaning of a text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader”.
Although I don’t adhere to any theory absolutely, this makes some sense to me – as does my extrapolation from this that the reader’s background and life experiences contribute not only to the meaning they obtain from a work, but their assessment of it.
Colum McCann’s latest novel Twist was my reading group’s last book of the year. All of us were fascinated by its underlying story about the data – our data – travelling around the world via undersea cables, and the fragility or vulnerability of this data. But, when it came to assessing how much we liked the book, other things came into play, things that say as much about who we are as readers, what we look for in books, as they say about the book itself. For example, readers who look to empathise with appealing, rounded, human characters might assess Twist quite differently from those for whom ideas play a significant role in their preferences.
I’ll return to this, but first more on the novel. Twist is narrated by 50-something Irish novelist, Anthony Fennell, whose career had stalled. It “felt stagnant”, and he was feeling disconnected from life, “the world did not beckon, nor did it greatly reward”. He was, in fact, “unsure what fiction or drama could do anymore”. He needed, he tells us, “a story about connection, about grace, about repair”. Fortuitously, into his lap falls an assignment to write a long feature about a cable repair vessel, which is led by a man called John Conway (whose name, we soon realise, contains allusions to Joseph Conrad and also perhaps to that other well-known JC).
So, in the first few pages of the novel, we know we are being told a story from after the event by a writer who was there as it happened. We know this event relates to Conway because Fennell tells us on the opening page that something had happened to him, and that he is going to tell his version of what happened as best he can, which might take some “liberties with the gaps”. Conway, then, is central to the narrative arc, but we also know that the subject matter is data and the internet, and that the theme will concern ideas like connection and disconnection, brokenness and repair, fact, fiction and the limits of storytelling. It’s impressive, in fact, just how much of the rest of the book is set up in the first couple of pages.
The narrative proper then starts. It’s January 2019, and Fennell meets Conway, and his partner Zanele, in Cape Town, before joining the Georges Lacointe on its journey up the western African coast to the site of a cable break. It takes some time to get there, so we get to know Conway a bit more. He is a good leader, and his multicultural crew of men respect him. The first and main cable break is repaired at the end of Part One, and then things go seriously awry. Zanele, who was performing in her unauthorised climate-change-focused version of Waiting for Godot in rural England, suffers an acid attack. Life starts to “unravel” for Conway who cannot get away to help her. Indeed, as the back cover says, Conway disappears.
I will leave the plot there. It does get more complicated, so I’ve not spoiled it I believe. I will return instead to my opening point about readers and their assessments. Most of those in my group who had reservations focused on the characters. Conway and Zanele were too shadowy; they were not well-rounded; we didn’t know them well. And, why choose a hard-to-identify-with man like Fennell as a narrator? I understand these questions but they don’t concern me, because I read the book differently – so let’s look at that.
Twist draws from, or was inspired by, two classic novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The great Gatsby, with its story of a man’s obsessive love for an unattainable woman, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness and its story about the darkness at the centre of colonialism. While the narrative arc clearly owes much to Fitzgerald, McCann said during the aforementioned conversation that Conrad’s novel provides the more obvious literary parallel. Those tubes along the seabed, he said, follow old colonial routes, and suggest corporate or digital colonialism.
“There is no logic. The world is messy.” (Fennell)
Looking at the novel through this perspective provides a way of understanding why McCann has written it the way he has. It is not about Conway and Zanele. We only see them through the eyes of Fennell. They are established enough to draw us in but their prime role is to support the ideas – disconnection, connection, turbulence, repair – rather than to be the subjects of the story. We know Fennell somewhat better, as we need to. He is a flawed man, stalled in life and feeling disconnected from it. It is his journey through the narrative that carries our hopes for repair.
If I had any criticism, it would more likely concern the writing. McCann’s is an exuberant, epigrammatic style. It’s not hard to see what he is doing, the games he is playing with meaning and metaphor. However, I can enjoy this sort of writing. It keeps ideas to the fore. And they were ideas that interest me – zeitgeist issues about the fragility of our data; the line between doubt/certainty, connection/disconnection (emotionally, spiritually, technologically), and break/repair; and the messiness of life. It’s not hard to find quotable quotes, like “opinion, the obscene certainty of our days” (p. 218) and “the disease of our days is that we spend so much time on the surface” (p. 25). I enjoy these too!
Part Two opens with:
It is, I suppose, the job of the teller to rearrange the scattered pieces of a story so that they conform to some sort of coherence. Between fact and fiction lie memory and imagination. Within memory and imagination lies our desire to capture at least some essence of the truth, which is, at best, messy.
By the end, McCann has told a story which illuminates the messiness of our time. The truth is that there is no real coherence. There is – and probably always has been – just all of us trying to muddle through the best way we can. This is not earth-shattering news, but McCann exposes some of the issues, many driven by technology, that affect our trying today. The light he throws on these – and the personal progress Fennell makes – are why I enjoyed reading this novel.
Colum McCann
Twist
London: Bloomsbury, 2025
239pp.
ISBN: 9781526656957
Whispering Gums 
I totally agree with reception theory!
This book hadn’t crossed my radar until I started compiling the ‘Books of the Year’ list – it’s appearing on quite a few lists.
Oh that’s interesting Kate … I look forward to seeing the list. I saw one the other day – The Guardian’s perhaps – and I thought I don’t envy you but I’m glad you are doing it!!
Anyhow, Twist is a fascinating book and I thought a good read.
I always derive enjoyment from your reviews, ST, because reviewing a book is entirely beyond me and I find your methodology admirable, regardless of my feeling about the book itself.
You’ve made me realize that I obtain the greatest pleasure from books that are not about the vagaries of human nature. As I was reading “Anthony Fennell, whose career had stalled. It “felt stagnant”, and he was feeling disconnected from life, “the world did not beckon, nor did it greatly reward”. He was, in fact, “unsure what fiction or drama could do anymore”” into my excuse for a mind popped an impression of Jane Harper’s writing. Why, I can only surmise, was because said excuse for a mind wanted to remind me that *that* kind of writing is what I like best. (But why hers, I honestly don’t know: certainly she is among my favourites, but I would’ve expected, say, Heather Rose or Helen Garner …)
Because although she writes crime fiction, her characters are all very credible to me: they’re not 2-dimensional paper cutouts, not by any means. They have credible lives, and credible problems with credible solutions (or none).
And yet I will be rivetted by listening again to “Little Dorrit” …
Oh, I don’t know !! Grrrrrrrrr … It’s that the book reviewed above does absolutely nothing to entice me because it’s too … too … SOMETHING.
There. A detailed statement (not !) of an ancient excuse for a mind’s opinion.
Wow MR! This is an unusually long comment from you! I love any comments you make but I love that this post inspired you to share your thoughts about reading preferences.
I love flawed, credible, rounded characters too, which is why I loved, say, Olive Kitteridge, but I see it as horses for courses? I think Fennell is more rounded but he doesn’t really know Conway and Zanele the way an omniscient narrator would so neither do we. Despite what you say, I wonder if you would like this on audiobook? I feel it would rollick along quite well.
Naah.
[grin]
Fair enough!
Even though I’m a reader who looks to ‘empathise with appealing, rounded, human characters,’ Twist appeals to me, maybe because of your last comments, that for you it’s a story about all of us trying to muddle along.
Thanks Rose. I like – love – those characters too, but I tend to go with the flow to see what an author is doing, and if I see they are doing something else and that something else and the way they are writing it engages me then I’m in. As you might have seen Kate say above, this book is appearing in a few “best of” lists.
Hi Sue, as usual your review is excellent. I read Twist back in August, and it is Conway who has stayed with me. I felt that all the characters were a bit twisted, disappointed with life but making the best of it. I rather character written stories rather than plots. I believe Twist had both. I did see the connection with Conrad novel, but not so much with Fitzgerald’s novel.
Thanks very much Meg. I agree with you re Fitzgerald versus Conrad.
I prefer character-driven stories to plot-driven ones too, and I agree this one had both – plus being ideas-driven perhaps. I guess most novels have an idea behind them, but in some it is front and centre, and I think it was here?
Twist is not on my radar, but from your review it seems to me it fails, it doesn’t stand on its own but needs the author’s further explanation to make sense of its parallels with Heart of Darkness.
Oh no, I don’t think it does Bill … I’m sorry if I’ve implied that. There is a strong section early in the book about flood in the Congo spreading out and away, for example, together with other aspects of the plot which hint at Conrad. But, also, there’s the fact that the book doesn’t need the allusion to Conrad to make sense. It’s not a slavish retelling by any stretch.
This is on my bedside table atm, but my reading mood is a bit all over the shop, so not making much progress on anything! But something about this does appeal to me too.
I know the feeling, Brona, but somehow you still manage to get through more than I do! I don’t know whether you’ll love this or not but I think you will like reading it and find it interesting to write about.
The perfect book group book to inspire a variety of thoughts and opinions. I imagine the discussion was really interesting. Enjoyed reading your thoughts on it. The book is not on my radar but it sounds pretty good.
Thanks Stefanie, yes, you are right, it was. The discussion was interesting because there were so many angles. You would probably be interested in what he has to say about the way our information (the important and the unimportant) is, essentially, in the hands of others with little security. There are some powerful sections in the novel about this issue.
I swear we called “reception theory” something else when I took a graduate course on literary theory in 2004. Now I’m wondering if I’m remembering wrong, or if it has been long enough that the name changed!I want so badly to read Heart of Darkness, but my brain just will not allow it. I’ve tried a few times, and I’m always left with an astounding sense of, “What is even happening??” I love that this novel is about digital colonialism, but according to your reading group’s comments, it doesn’t sound like a winner if the characters are unknowable? Lastly, this reminds me of how AI is everywhere right now, and so when I jump on any social media site, people write in the comments how cool a photo or video is, but they just cannot trust that it is real. Actually, I just noticed a new commercial from a lawyer group in my area, which has had commercials for ages, used AI instead of actors in their latest ad. It was bizarre.
Ooh, I hope I have understood correctly Melanie. How was it used when you studied literary theory? When I studied literature in the 1970s, we didn’t talk much about theory, but from memory, my teachers/professors took from various ideas but probably with a strong element of “new criticism”.
Your response to Heart of darkness made me chuckle a little. I guess not a lot HAPPENS in the plot sense – thought there is a plot related to journey – but a lot does happen in terms of reason, ideas and ideals.
There was a lit crit lens that fits exactly what you’re describing…. I think it was called the Reader Response Theory now that I’ve thought about it more.
I guess it’s not even about what happens in Heart of Darkness; more like I literally don’t know what I’m reading in those opening pages. Like I’ve forgotten English. 🫣
Oh yes, Melanie, thanks … I think the two are related but maybe Reader-Response theory is the wider term. Wikipedia says Reception theory is a version of Reader-Response?
Ah, thanks re Conrad. I’ll try to look at the opening again as it’s been a long time. Sometimes I think I should just push through the openings of books if they mystify me because usually it comes together a few pages in? But that doesn’t always work. Today however I’m packing up and setting off for Melbourne so I may not get onto this immediately.
I can never remember which of Conrad’s books I’ve read, but recently, hunting around for early women writers, I came across a very interesting scholarly edition of Heart of Darkness, which made me want to read (or maybe reread? well, if one has to pose that question it might as well BE a fresh read, eh? lol) it, y’know, with more context than I’d’ve had outside a classroom anyhow. Fitzgerald has never been a favourite, but I might actually enjoy CM’s take more than the original in that case. CM’s book about writing, BTW, is an absolute favourite. Very short, sweet, but I enjoyed it immensely (akin to Negotiating with the Dead, but trim). Hmmm, I wonder how many classics I’ve read only to read a retelling… (one answer, more than Bill has /waving).
Haha Marcie! I know what you mean about which ones you’ve read, particularly classics. I often have have same conundrum, but in this case I know because H of D is the only Conrad I’ve read.
Thanks for the heads up on McCann’s book on writing. I can imagine it would be good.