B. is on page 140 of 336 of Bookshops & Bonedust

"In 2009, Colum McCann published a curious book called “Let the Great World Spin� that had everybody looking up. The novel, which went on to win both a National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, presents several apparently disparate stories while a tightrope-walker modeled after Philippe Petit tiptoes between the twin towers on a wire.

Fifteen years later, McCann is back traversing a much longer, more fragile wire. But now, it’s not high over our heads; it’s running along the bottom of the ocean. The line that winds through “Twist� is a transcontinental fiber-optic cable that carries the great world’s messages, news, images, voices and ideas at the speed of light.

The narrator, Irishman Anthony Fennell, introduces himself as a minor novelist and occasional playwright who needs to shake off the lethargy that’s atrophied his talent. At 47, his life has not been going well. His career is dormant. He hasn’t spoken to his teenage son in years. “How long,� he wonders, “had I been walking around in the same set of clothes?�

Hoping to arrest his descent into alcoholism, he accepts an assignment from a magazine editor to write about deep-sea cable-repair operations. That technical subject sounds likely to inspire more drinking � even Anthony admits, “I had no interest in cables� � but he’s determined to deliver “a story about connection, about grace, about repair.�

A more skeptical magazine editor might have pulled the plug right there at that first hint of grandiloquence. Instead, Anthony flies to Cape Town with a generous budget and waits. The moment a major cable snaps off the west coast of Africa, he’ll be ready to....

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Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer is currently reading Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

Maria Milchman is on page 276 of 328 of The Hunting Party