The book has a lovely premise – the undersea cables that connect our internet, and the boat crew that finds and repairs them when they break. It also has some exquisitely defined characters and strong scenes.
The most beautifully realised part of this book (set around 2021) is where the protagonist, a failed playwright, recovering alcoholic, estranged father and current freelance journalist, hires an apartment in Africa and settles in with a cook a guard and a gardener, to wrestle together his 10,000-word piece on these undersea cables for an online publication. It's vital, visceral and real and there's some lovely developments. You get the sense of an author writing what they know.
Then you step back and look at the character and the circumstance. You have to ask: why didn't you go home and write this in your flat. In, like, two nights, while also pitching your next story?
McCann is a very successful novelist. The parts of his book set in the foyers of hotels are artfully composed, while the aspect where the protagonist propels himself through a multi-month international journey on a single freelance commission is not questioned.
At one point the protagonist is given a second commission, which is then abruptly cancelled. He does not for a moment fret about whether to send a bill for the lost work.
Which would, probably, be fine if the book were not ABOUT the effect of the internet on communication. No reflections on the impact of all those undersea cables on the market value of the written word? Or if the protagonist was not meant to be a failure. Put a success in his past, some wealthy parents maybe, the whole thing becomes fine.
So. Is this like complaining that the characters in Friends couldn't afford those apartments in real life? Is it dumb? Or is it okay to point out, hey, the financial circumstances of this character were such that I could no longer suspend disbelief and it took me out of the story?
by TomasTTEngin