Colum McCann sends a wayward journalist to the ocean floor
A review in the Swiss paper Le Courrier introduces the Irish novelist's new book, built around the unglamorous work of repairing the undersea cables that carry the world's data.
According to Le Courrier, Colum McCann's new novel follows Anthony Fennell, a drifting, alcoholic, loosely credentialed journalist who is handed an unusual assignment: report on the repair of internet cables lying deep under the sea.
The Swiss outlet frames the book against what it calls, quoting the novel, an age of 'immense cupidité, de désirs idiots, et, au bout du compte, d'isolement incompréhensible' — immense greed, foolish desires, and, in the end, incomprehensible isolation. Our data, the review notes, travels beneath the ocean and crosses vast distances in a fraction of a second, a fact the novel uses to set its human story of drift and disrepair against the invisible infrastructure that keeps the connected world running.
Le Courrier's account gives no title, publisher or translator for the French edition, nor any detail of who repairs the cables, where the ship sails, or how Fennell's assignment resolves. Readers who keep an eye on McCann's work will want to wait for the book's full presentation before adding it to a shelf.
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