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The follow-up to Booker-listed literary sensation Solar Bones is a terse metaphysical thriller, named a most anticipated book of the year by The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The New Statesman.
Nealon returns from prison to his house in the West of Ireland to find it empty. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child. It is as if the world has forgotten or erased him. Then he starts getting calls from a man who claims to know what's happened to his family-a man who'll tell Nealon all he needs to know in return for a single meeting.
In a hotel lobby, in the shadow of an unfolding terrorist attack, Nealon and the man embark on a conversation shot through with secrets and evasions, a verbal game of cat and mouse that leaps from Nealon's past and childhood to the motives driving a series of international crimes launched against "a world so wretched it can only be redeemed by an act of revenge." McCormack's existential noir is a terse and brooding exploration of the connections between rural Ireland and the globalized cruelties of the twentyfirst century. It is also an incisive portrait of a young and struggling family, and a ruthless interrogation of what we owe to those nearest to us, and to the world at large.
"Evocative prose conjures vivid images of the brooding Irish countryside and Nealon's bleak existence, but by eschewing context, catharsis, or anything resembling a conclusion in favor of setting and mood, McCormack delivers more of a half-cooked literary exercise than a full-fledged novel. While certainly distinctive, this is likely to leave readers wanting more." —Publishers Weekly
"A memorable attempt to evoke the murky contemporary relationship between individuals and unseen global systems. As its mysteries compound, the novel constructs a vast speculative network in which everything appears conspiratorially connected—'art and politics, light and dark, past and future'—yet nothing is really understood." —The Wall Street Journal
"Tightly structured, with elements of noir." —The Los Angeles Times
"A suspenseful and beautiful work by a writer who hates where he believes the world is headed and is attuned to the simple joys we are in danger of losing." —The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Terror, crime and sinister phone-calls — a magnificent Irish novel. For the most part, it reads like a thriller, shot through with a pervading atmosphere of precarity and uncertainty ... a beautifully written collision of mystery and metaphysics." ―The Telegraph
"Drawing these threads of heartbreak, surreal menace and the possible imminent collapse of the world together, McCormack weaves a web that holds the reader in suspense to the end—and beyond." ―The Spectator
"McCormack's language is evocative, perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere he builds throughout the book ... As in Solar Bones, McCormack displays his gift for describing landscapes and situations that might seem unlovely, but for the fact that they are loved by the author's observing eye ... This is a strange novel, sinister yet hopeful, a descent into darkness that somehow manages to rise into a ringing light." —The Guardian
"A world of chaos and instability, with a troubled multi-dimensional character at its centre and an exquisitely rendered rural Ireland of beauty and darkness as the backdrop. McCormack is a cryptic, elliptical writer, forensic in his plotting and canny at teasing his readers." —Financial Times
"This Plague of Souls is written in perfectly-pitched cadences. It captures with exquisite care of a man ambushed by loss and fear, by hovering forces that are mysterious and otherworldly and beyond his control. It further establishes Mike McCormack as one of the best novelists writing now." —Colm Tóibín, author of The Master
"A small novel crammed with big ideas, This Plague of Souls is at once though-provoking and deeply satisfying." —Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses
"A sombre tale shot through with glints of dark humour, in which the sins of the past at once haunt and illuminate the present. A compelling read, with a thrillingly undecided ending." —John Banville, Booker-winning author of The Sea
This information about This Plague of Souls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from the West of Ireland. His work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Notes from a Coma (2005), shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award and Forensic Songs (2012). He was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (1996) and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2007)
Solar Bones (2016), won the Goldsmiths Prize 2016, the BGE Irish Novel of the Year Award 2016, BGE Irish Book of the Year Award 2016 and nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2017.
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