This is a novel about how information travels, and on some level, about how we interpret and analyze information. The protagonist spends the majority of the novel trying - and ultimately failing - to gather information and decode an enigmatic man named Conway. For the protagonist, Conway is a puzzle to be solved. Unfortunately for me, Conway’s background or motivations did not interest me. He didn’t leap off the page as a mystery to unfurl for me, and therefore the plot dragged.

In the end, the protagonist and his white whale Conway were both unlikeable. There’s some complicated language when the protagonist, a European, describes South Africa and Ghana - two places I’ve had the extreme pleasure to live and experience. The pacing of the novel is somewhat irregular, as Part Four reads very differently to Parts One through Three. 

I picked up this book on the merit of McCann’s prose, which is always strong. I also love thinking about the ocean in new ways, so I appreciated this as an interesting contrast to Julia Armfield’s “Our Wives Under the Sea,” which I had read recently.