{"product_id":"solar-bones-isbn-9781616959531","title":"Solar Bones","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Goldsmiths Prize\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year \u003cbr\u003eAn\u003ci\u003e Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Club Choice\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"With stylistic gusto, and in rare, spare, precise and poetic prose, Mike McCormack gets to the music of what is happening all around us. One of the best novels of the year.\" \u003cb\u003e—Colum McCann, author of \u003ci\u003eLet the Great World Spin\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTransAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterwork that builds its own style and language one broken line at a time; the result is a visionary accounting of the now.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA vital, tender, death-haunted work by one of Ireland’s most important contemporary writers, \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones \u003c\/i\u003eis a celebration of the unexpected beauty of life and of language, and our inescapable nearness to our last end. It is All Souls Day, and the spirit of Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table and remembers. In flowing, relentless prose, Conway recalls his life in rural Ireland: as a boy and man, father, husband, citizen. His ruminations move from childhood memories of his father’s deftness with machines to his own work as a civil engineer, from transformations in the local economy to the tidal wave of global financial collapse. Conway’s thoughts go still further, outward to the vast systems of time and history that hold us all. He stares down through the “vortex of his being,” surveying all the linked circumstances that combined to bring him into this single moment, and he makes us feel, if only for an instant, all the terror and gratitude that existence inspires.\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times \u003c\/i\u003e3rd Best Irish Novel of the 21st Century\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eTimes (UK)\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of 2017 \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the International DUBLIN Literary Award\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year \u003cbr\u003eAn NPR Best Book of 2017\u003cbr\u003eAn \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Club Choice\u003cbr\u003eA Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA 2018 ALA Notable Book\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wonderfully original, distinctly contemporary . . . Where modernism took a world that appeared to be whole and showed it to be broken, \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e takes a world that can't stop talking about how broken it is, and suggests it might possibly be whole.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With stylistic gusto, and in rare, spare, precise and poetic prose, Mike McCormack gets to the music of what is happening all around us. One of the best novels of the year.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Colum McCann, author of \u003ci\u003eLet the Great World Spin\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTransAtlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Pure enchantment from an otherworldly talent. I admired the hell out of this book.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Eleanor Catton, Man Booker Prize–winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Luminaries\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mike McCormack has created a narrative of such power and precision . . . The book, ​contemporary and tragic and funny,​ is ​a delight.\"\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e​​ —​NPR.org​ \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The ordinary is hallowed by the originality of its expression . . . the writing is so precise and consistent. \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones \u003c\/i\u003eis a successful experimental novel, but more than that it is a good human story.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e—​The Wall Street Journal​ \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e​\u003cbr\u003e\"​A Joycean novel about illness, suffering and work​ . . . ​remarkable . . . poetic​. It is the vivid attention to detail, both in \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e, James Joyce’s masterpiece, and in \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e, which make both these novels resonate like that evening bell.\"\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e​\u003ci\u003e​—The Economist \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Excellence is always rare and often unexpected: we don’t necessarily expect masterpieces even from the great. Mike McCormack’s \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is exceptional indeed: an extraordinary novel by a writer not yet famous but surely destined to be acclaimed by anyone who believes that the novel is not dead and that novelists are not merely lit-fest fodder for the metropolitan middle classes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"A heady rumination on modern life as otherworldly as it is grounded in reality.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Entertainment Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Extraordinary . . . an intoxicating experimental novel. Such experimentation may make some people hesitant; don’t be, the prose flows more like poetry, and is a sombre joy to read.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Financial Times​\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e​\"Clearly a major work. . . ​\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is a modernist stream-of-consciousness novel à la James Joyce. ​C​arefully and cleverly crafted ​. . . ​\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is a must-read.​ A​ fascinating, surprisingly readable tour de force of a book.​\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Winnipeg Free Press​\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A lyrical rumination.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Vulture\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A​ beautiful and strangely compulsive read​.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e​​\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)​ \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Astonishing talent . . . \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones \u003c\/i\u003eis a lyrical masterpiece, of a surprisingly accessible kind, that almost demands to be read aloud.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Sydney Morning Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“As in Don DeLillo’s \u003ci\u003eWhite Noise\u003c\/i\u003e, it is the numinous, otherworldly qualities of modern life, rather than some fantastical future, that we are concerned with here . . . The work of an author in the full maturity of his talent, \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e climaxes in a passage of savage, Gnostic religiosity: the writing catches fire as we draw near to the void, pass over into death itself, and therein confront the truth that even in a fallen universe, when all distractions tumble away, the only adequate response to our being is astonishment.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An impressive meditation, as Joyce would say, 'upon all the living and the dead' . . . Mike McCormack is a gifted Irish writer.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—​Minneapolis Star Tribune​ \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One-of-a-kind. McCormack is a wonderfully accessible, quick-witted writer—and, with references to Radiohead,\u003ci\u003e Mad Max\u003c\/i\u003e, and the post-millennial \u003ci\u003eBattlestar Galactica\u003c\/i\u003e, a smartly contemporary one. The book is alive with startling connections between the exterior and interior worlds . . . an irresistible driving rhythm. It's a book that demands a second reading and readings of the author's other books . . . This transcendent novel should expand McCormack's following on this side of the Atlantic and further establish him as a heavyweight of contemporary Irish fiction along with the likes of Anne Enright and Kevin Barry.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, Starred Review\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The latest from McCormack is a beautifully constructed novel that blends Beckett’s torrential monologues with a realist portrait of small-town Ireland. This is an intelligent, striking work.\"\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—​\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, Starred Review​ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"​\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e by Mike McCormack is a luminous poem cloaked in the form of a novel. Sentences swoop and soar with flowing, almost musical language, building to a climax of insight and grace. McCormack proves himself to be a genius of language and form​.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Shelf Awareness, Starred Review​\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"McCormack’s third novel exhibits his startling imagination and humor as well as a measured narrative style.This book is a brilliant tour de force.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003e​Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, Starred Review​ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Mike McCormack’s harrowing novel, \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e, is brave and audacious, humane and concerned. A gem of a novel.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e​​\u003cb\u003e—CounterPunch ​ \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"In radiant, exquisite prose, Mike McCormack dilates time, erasing the line between the external, concrete world and the interior world of thought and feeling, memory and soul. \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is a deeply affecting, mesmerizing and quietly astonishing novel.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dana Spiotta, author of \u003ci\u003eInnocents and Others\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hauntingly sad, but also frequently very funny . . . Proust reconfigured by Flann O’Brien.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Literary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e​\"​McCormack’s novel embraces a rich panorama of working life, spiritual contemplation, and musings over Ireland’s economic woes. Deserving a readership far larger than Irish-literature devotees, this is a work of bold risks and luminous creativity.​\"​\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e​\u003ci\u003e​ —Booklist​ \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A deeply felt, discursive celebration of Life . . . ​unquestionably art of the highest order. [\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e] regularly resembles both John Burnside and W.G. Sebald, two writers similarly haunted by many of McCormack’s preoccupations. ​\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—​The Mookse and the Gripes\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"McCormack is one of our bravest and most innovative writers—he shoots for the stars with this one and does not fall short.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Kevin Barry, author of \u003ci\u003eBeatlebone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One of the finest novels I’ve read in some time. Mike McCormack has long been a powerhouse on the Irish literary map, beloved by readers in the know, but with \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones \u003c\/i\u003ehe has taken things to another level; the rendering of life and death is beautiful, generous and true, the language and its handling is marvelous and new, the reckoning with power and its cruelties is exactly as frank and relentless as such a reckoning needs, now, to be. A pure and genuinely inspired vision; a brilliant mind charging on.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eBelinda McKeon, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eTender\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is like nothing I've read, an experimental novel about love, engineering, and contaminated water that hits all three of its targets: heart, head, and guts. This book gushes blood, and McCormack's wondrous feat is to chart its movements with an engineer's precision and a poet's ear. \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e will draw comparisons to \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e, and certainly its fluid stream-of-conscious would do Joyce proud, but I was also reminded of another Irish novel, Roddy Doyle's \u003ci\u003eThe Commitments\u003c\/i\u003e—or, at least, the soundtrack to its film adaptation—with its heavy concentration of blue-eyed soul. This is a rare and beautiful novel, and one I won't soon forget.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Adam Wilson, author of \u003ci\u003eFlatscreen\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"A masterpiece.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Blake Morrison, author of \u003ci\u003eAnd When Did You Last See Your Father?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Exhilarating.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Lisa McInerney, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Glorious Heresies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Difficult to put down. This is prose that reads as if it is being thought . . . reduced me to tears.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mike McCormack's \u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e, with its one calmly unspooling sentence, hearkens back to the great modernist novels, but also moves forward from the present with all the urgency and anxiety of our fraught new century. This is the kind of novel a reader yearns for, one that illuminates what it means to be here now. It's nothing short of a masterpiece.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eSolar Bones\u003c\/i\u003e is one of those books that comes around once every few years and kicks the crap out of you. Mike McCormack creates a terrifyingly real and startling world through the eyes of the late Marcus Conway, a civil engineer who reflects upon his life in one long transcendent, stream-of-conscious narrative. Memories bleed into one another, as the ghost of a man sits at his kitchen table and recalls event after event, which tip into one another satisfyingly, until we're left with a portrait of a man situated in the twenty-first century, where global catastrophes and politics threaten and impact our sometimes isolate bubbles of everyday life. Almost Knausgaardian in spirit, this novel celebrates and honors the working man's life—failures, successes, and all the idleness and fate sandwiched in between.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—John Gibbs, Green Apple Books on the Park\u003c\/b\u003eMike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from County Mayo in Ireland. His previous work includes \u003ci\u003eForensic Songs\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eNotes from a Coma\u003c\/i\u003e, which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award; \u003ci\u003eCrowe’s Requiem\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eGetting It in the Head\u003c\/i\u003e, which was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book of the Year. He lives in Galway.the bell\u003cbr\u003e   the bell as\u003cbr\u003e   hearing the bell as\u003cbr\u003e     hearing the bell as standing here\u003cbr\u003e     the bell being heard standing here\u003cbr\u003e     hearing it ring out through the grey light of this\u003cbr\u003e     morning, noon or night\u003cbr\u003e     god knows\u003cbr\u003e     this grey day standing here and\u003cbr\u003e     listening to this bell in the middle of the day, the middle of the day bell, the Angelus bell in the middle of the day, ringing out through the grey light to\u003cbr\u003e     here\u003cbr\u003e     standing in the kitchen\u003cbr\u003e     hearing this bell\u003cbr\u003e     snag my heart and\u003cbr\u003e     draw the whole world into\u003cbr\u003e     being here\u003cbr\u003e     pale and breathless after coming a long way to stand in this kitchen\u003cbr\u003e     confused\u003cbr\u003e     no doubt about that\u003cbr\u003e     but hearing the bell from the village church a mile away as the crow flies, across the street from the garda station, beneath the giant sycamore trees which tower over it and in which a colony of rooks have made their nests, so many and so noisy that sometimes in spring when they are nesting their clamour fills the church and\u003cbr\u003e     exhausted now, so quickly\u003cbr\u003e     that sprint to the church and the bell\u003cbr\u003e     yes, they are the real thing\u003cbr\u003e     the real bells\u003cbr\u003e     not a transmission or a broadcast because\u003cbr\u003e     there’s no mistaking the fuller depth and resonance of the sound carried towards me across the length and breadth of this day and which, even at this distance reverberates in my chest\u003cbr\u003e     a systolic thump from the other side of this parish, which lies on the edge of this known world with Sheeffry and Mweelrea to the south and the open expanse of Clew Bay to the north\u003cbr\u003e     the Angelus bell\u003cbr\u003e     ringing out over its villages and townlands, over the fields and hills and bogs in between, six chimes of three across a minute and a half, a summons struck on the lip of the void which gathers this parish together through all its primary and secondary roads with\u003cbr\u003e     all its schools and football pitches\u003cbr\u003e     all its bridges and graveyards\u003cbr\u003e     all its shops and pubs\u003cbr\u003e     the builder’s yard and health clinic\u003cbr\u003e     the community centre\u003cbr\u003e     the water treatment plant and\u003cbr\u003e     the handball alley\u003cbr\u003e     the made world with\u003cbr\u003e     all the focal points around which a parish like this gathers itself as surely as\u003cbr\u003e     the world itself did at the beginning of time, through\u003cbr\u003e     mountains, rivers and lakes\u003cbr\u003e     when it gathered in these parts around the Bunowen river which rises in the Lachta hills and flows north towards the sea, carving out that floodplain to which all roads, primary and secondary, following the contours of the landscape, make their way and in the middle of which stands\u003cbr\u003e     the village of Louisburgh\u003cbr\u003e     from which the Angelus bell is ringing, drawing up the world again\u003cbr\u003e     mountains, rivers and lakes\u003cbr\u003e     acres, roods and perches\u003cbr\u003e     animal, mineral, vegetable\u003cbr\u003e     covenant, cross and crown\u003cbr\u003e     the given world with\u003cbr\u003e     all its history to brace myself while\u003cbr\u003e     standing here in the kitchen\u003cbr\u003e     of this house\u003cbr\u003e     I’ve lived in for nearly twenty-five years and raised a family, this house outside the village of Louisburgh in the county of Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, the village in which I can trace my seed and breed back to a time when it was nothing more than a ramshackle river crossing of a few smoky homesteads clustered around a forge and a log bridge, a sod-and-stone hamlet not yet gathered to a proper plan nor licensed to hold a fair, my line traceable to the gloomy prehistory in which a tenacious clan of farmers and fishermen kept their grip on a small patch of land\u003cbr\u003e     through hail and gale\u003cbr\u003e     hell and high water\u003cbr\u003e     men with bellies and short tempers, half of whom went to their graves with pains in their chests before they were sixty, good singers many of them, all\u003cbr\u003e     adding to the home place down the generations till it swelled to twenty acres, grazing and tillage, with access to open commonage on Carramore hill which overlooks the bay and\u003cbr\u003e     this pain, this fucking pain tells me that\u003cbr\u003e     to the best of my knowledge\u003cbr\u003e     knowledge being the best of me, that\u003cbr\u003e     that\u003cbr\u003e     there is something strange about all this, some twitchy energy in the ether which has affected me from the moment\u003cbr\u003e     those bells began to toll, something flitting through me, a giddiness\u003cbr\u003e     drawing me\u003cbr\u003e     through the house\u003cbr\u003e     door by door\u003cbr\u003e     room by room\u003cbr\u003e     up and down the hall\u003cbr\u003e     like a mad thing\u003cbr\u003e     bedrooms, bathroom, sitting room and\u003cbr\u003e     back again to the kitchen where\u003cbr\u003e     Christ\u003cbr\u003e     such a frantic burst\u003cbr\u003e     Christ\u003cbr\u003e     not so much a frantic burst as a rolling crease in the light, flowing from room to room only to find\u003cbr\u003e     this house is empty\u003cbr\u003e     not a soul anywhere\u003cbr\u003e     because this is a weekday and my family are gone\u003cbr\u003e     all gone\u003cbr\u003e     the kids all away now and of course Mairead is at work and won’t be back till after four so the house is mine till then, something that should gladden me as normally I would only be too happy to potter around on my own here, doing nothing, listening to the radio or reading the paper, but now the idea makes me uneasy, with four hours stretching ahead of me till she returns,\u003cbr\u003e     alone here for four hours\u003cbr\u003e     four hours till she returns so\u003cbr\u003e     there must be some way of filling the span of time that now spreads out ahead of me, something to cut through this gnawing unease because\u003cbr\u003e     the paper\u003cbr\u003e     yes\u003cbr\u003e     that’s what I’ll do\u003cbr\u003e     the daily paper\u003cbr\u003e     get the keys of the car and drive into the village to get the paper, park on the square in front of the chemist and then stand on the street and\u003cbr\u003e     this is what I will do\u003cbr\u003e     stand there for as long as it takes for someone to come along and speak to me, someone to say\u003cbr\u003e     hello\u003cbr\u003e     hello\u003cbr\u003e     or until someone salutes me in one way or another, waves to me or calls my name, because even though this street is a street like any other it is different in one crucial aspect – this particular street is mine, mine in the sense of having walked it thousands of times\u003cbr\u003e     man and boy\u003cbr\u003e     winter and summer\u003cbr\u003e     hail, rain and shine so that\u003cbr\u003e     all its doors and shop-fronts are familiar to me, every pole and kerbstone along its length recognisable to me\u003cbr\u003e     this street a given\u003cbr\u003e     this street is something to rely on\u003cbr\u003e     fount and ground\u003cbr\u003e     one of those places where someone will pass who can say of me\u003cbr\u003e     yes, I know this man\u003cbr\u003e     or more specifically\u003cbr\u003e     yes, I know this man and I know his sister Eithne and I knew his mother and father before him and all belonging to him\u003cbr\u003e     or more intimately\u003cbr\u003e     of course I know him – Marcus Conway – he lives across the fields from me, I can see his house from the back door\u003cbr\u003e     or more adamantly\u003cbr\u003e     why wouldn’t I know him, Marcus Conway the engineer, I went to school with him and played football with him – we wore the black and gold together\u003cbr\u003e     or more impatiently\u003cbr\u003e     I should know him, his son and daughter went to school with\u003cbr\u003e my own – we were on the school council together\u003cbr\u003e     or more irritably\u003cbr\u003e     of course I know him – I lent him a chainsaw to cut back that hawthorn hedge at the end of his road and\u003cbr\u003e     so on and so on\u003cbr\u003e     to infinity\u003cbr\u003e     amen\u003cbr\u003e     the basic creed in all its moods and declensions, the articles of faith which verify me and upon which I have built a life in this parish with all its work and rituals for the best part of five decades and\u003cbr\u003e     this short history of the world to brace myself with\u003cbr\u003e     standing here in this kitchen, in this grey light and wondering\u003cbr\u003e     why this sudden need to rehearse these self-evident truths should press so heavily upon me today, why this feeling that there are\u003cbr\u003e     thresholds to cross\u003cbr\u003e     things to be settled\u003cbr\u003e     checks to be run\u003cbr\u003e     as if I had stepped into a narrow circumstance bordered around by oblivion while\u003cbr\u003e     looking for my keys now\u003cbr\u003e     frisking my pockets and glancing around, only to see that\u003cbr\u003e     Mairead has beaten me to the job, she has been out early and bought the papers – not one but two of them, local and national, both lying in the middle of the table neatly folded into each other, the light glossing unbroken across their surface, making it clear she has not read them herself that I might have the small pleasure of opening up a fresh newspaper, hearing it rattle and creak as it discloses itself, one of those experiences which properly begin the day or the afternoon as is the case now, turning it over and leafing through it\u003cbr\u003e     starting at the back, the sports pages, to read the headline\u003cbr\u003e     \u003ci\u003eHard Lessons in Latest Defeat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     as if this were the time and the place for a sermon\u003cbr\u003e     which prompts me to close it again quickly, not wanting any homily at this hour of the day with the paper showing the date as\u003cbr\u003e     November 2nd, the month of the Holy Souls already upon us, the year nearly gone so\u003cbr\u003e     what happened to October\u003cbr\u003e     come and gone in a flash, the clocks gone back for winter time only last week and\u003cbr\u003e     the front-page stories telling that the world is going about its relentless business of rising up in splendour and falling down in ruins with wars still ongoing in foreign parts – Afghanistan and Iraq among others – as peace settlements are being attempted elsewhere – Israel and Palestine – while closer to home, the drama is in a lower key but real nonetheless – bed shortages in hospitals and public sector wage agreements under pressure – all good human stories no matter how they will pan out, you can feel that, the flesh and blood element twitching in them, while at the same time\u003cbr\u003e     in the over-realm of international finance other, more abstract indices are rising and falling to their own havoc – share prices, interest rates, profit margins, solvency ratios – money upholding the necessary imbalances so that everything continues to move ever forward while on one of the inside pages there is\u003cbr\u003e     one year on\u003cbr\u003e     a long article with an illustrative graph and quotes outlining the causes and consequences of our recent economic collapse, a brief résumé of events that culminated on the night of September 29th, feast of the archangel Michael – the night the whole banking system almost collapsed and the country came within a hair’s breadth of waking the following morning to empty bank accounts and\u003cbr\u003e     for clarity’s sake\u003cbr\u003e     this article is illustrated by a sidebar which gives some indication of just how outsized the nation’s financial folly was in the years leading up to the collapse, debt piling up till it ran to tens of billions, incredible figures for a small island economy, awe-inspiring magnitudes which shifted forever the horizons of what we thought ourselves liable for and which now, stacked on top of each other like this – all those zeroes, glossy and hard, so given to viral increase – appear like\u003cbr\u003e     the indices and magnitudes of a new cosmology, the forces and velocities of some barren, inverse world – a negative realm that, over time, will suck the life out of us, that collapse which happened without offering any forewarning of itself, none that any of our prophets picked up on anyway as they were\u003cbr\u003e     all apparently struck dumb and blind, robbed of all foresight when surely this was the kind of catastrophe prophets should have an eye for or some foreknowledge of but didn’t since it is now evident in hindsight that our seers’ gifts were of a lesser order, their warnings lowered to a tremulous bleating, the voices of men hedging their bets and without the proper pitch of hysterical accusation as they settled instead for fault-finding and analysis, that cautionary note which in the end proved wholly inadequate to the coming disaster because pointing out flaws was never going to be enough and figures and projections, no matter how dire, were never likely to map out the real contours of the calamity or prove to be an adequate spell against it when, without that shrill tone of indictment, theirs was never a song to hold our attention and no point whatsoever meeting catastrophe with reason when what was needed was\u003cbr\u003e     our prophets deranged\u003cbr\u003e     and coming towards us wild-eyed","brand":"Soho Press","offers":[{"title":"Default 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