Excerpt from Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

    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
    the paper
    yes
    that's what I'll do
    the daily paper
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
    this is what I will do
    stand there for as long as it takes for someone to come along and speak to me, someone to say
    hello
    hello
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
    man and boy
    winter and summer
    hail, rain and shine so that
    all its doors and shop-fronts are familiar to me, every pole and kerbstone along its length recognisable to me
    this street a given
    fount and ground
    one of those places where someone will pass who can say of me
    yes, I know this man
    or more specifically
    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
    or more intimately
    of course I know him – Marcus Conway – he lives across the fields from me, I can see his house from the back door
    or more adamantly
    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
    or more impatiently
    I should know him, his son and daughter went to school with my own – we were on the school council together
    or more irritably
    of course I know him – I lent him a chainsaw to cut back that hawthorn hedge at the end of his road and
    so on and so on
    to infinity
    amen
    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
    this short history of the world to brace myself with
    standing here in this kitchen, in this grey light and wondering
    why this sudden need to rehearse these self-evident truths should press so heavily upon me today, why this feeling that there are
    thresholds to cross
    things to be settled
    checks to be run
    as if I had stepped into a narrow circumstance bordered around by oblivion while
    looking for my keys now
    frisking my pockets and glancing around, only to see that
    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

Excerpted from Solar Bones by Mike McCormack. Copyright © 2017 by Mike McCormack. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.