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Solar Bones

Mike McCormack

3.83 · Rating details · 3,528 ratings · 622 reviews

the Angelus bell
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

Once a year, on All Souls’ Day, it is said in Ireland that the dead may return. Solar Bones is the story of one such visit. Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer, turns up one ...more

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Paperback, 223 pages

Published May 5th 2016 by Tramp Press (first published May 2016)

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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Man Booker Prize Eligible 2017

178 books — 237 voters

Man Booker Longlist 2017

13 books — 54 voters

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· 3,528 ratings · 622 reviews

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Nov 12, 2016 Doug rated it it was ok

this

this book

this book just

won the prestigious Goldsmiths Prize, given for innovation in the novel form, which is what impelled me to read it in the first place, and I sort of wish I had finished it prior to its winning, because now it will look like I am just being contrary that I really didn't like it since a lot of people did, although the main reason apparently that it won is that it is purportedly one long 223 page sentence, but

the only reason that is so is because the bloody author d ...more

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Sep 08, 2017 Hannah Greendale rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, fiction, literary-fiction, booker-prize-nominee

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.

...more

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Sep 13, 2018 Paula rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Lovers of beautiful prose and experimental form

Recommended to Paula by: Booker, Goldsmiths

Shelves: favorite-authors, ireland, goldsmiths-prize, booker-prize-nominee, cultural, favorite-books, best-prose, intl-dublin-literary-award, contemporary, e-audio

Winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award, winner of the 2016 Goldsmith Prize, and the 2017 Booker nominee, Solar Bones is a stunning and beautifully written novel.

Set in a small Irish town, Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table on All Souls’ Day and reminisces about his life. Thru a stream of consciousness, he reflects on every day life ranging from his work as a civil engineer to politics and the economics of earlier and present times. He is an ordinary and moral man with a lovi ...more

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Aug 24, 2017 Maxwell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, ireland

After you get used to the writing style of this novel—it's technically all one sentence, no full stops—it's quite a beautiful read. It's told from the perspective of one man on a single afternoon as he reflects on his life, his marriage & children, his work, politics, and a lot of other big topics. But it's a very human novel. I admired it's ability to take philosophical views and ground them in one person's experience; it became very relatable and moving. I think this novel deserves a re-read b ...more

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Aug 25, 2017 Hannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

Wonderfully and intricately structured in a way that demanded my full attention this is a portrait of a man's life told in a single contemplative hour. Mike McCormack tells his story in a single sentence without proper punctuations and in places bending the rules of grammar to the limit - and it works absolutely beautifully. This lends the prose an immediacy and a poignancy that mesmerized me. This quiet novel tells of a quiet man - an engineer thinking about his life and the things important to Wonderfully and intricately structured in a way that demanded my full attention this is a portrait of a man's life told in a single contemplative hour. Mike McCormack tells his story in a single sentence without proper punctuations and in places bending the rules of grammar to the limit - and it works absolutely beautifully. This lends the prose an immediacy and a poignancy that mesmerized me. This quiet novel tells of a quiet man - an engineer thinking about his life and the things important to him: his wife and two children; but also meditating on other things, politics, finance, art, the importance of ritual, and many things more. The flow is disjointed, jumping between times and topics and the result is a portrait of a man that feels complete but at the same time as if there could be so much more to him then even meets his inner eye.

I went into this book only knowing of its structure and nothing about its plot - and I am glad I did. I loved discovering more and more of the man Marcus Conway is and how he became that way.

This quiet but impactful little novel took me completely by surprise with how unpretentious it felt while reading and how much I enjoyed reading it (let's be honest here: it could have been a pretentious mess in hands less talented). I am so very glad the book is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize because I don't know if I had read it otherwise.

Normally I would now give you the first sentence. But given that the first sentence is also the only sentence I will end this review with one of my favourite passages that just glows with the love Marcus has for his wife:

coming upon her unawares like that, my wife of twenty-five years sitting in profile with her hair swept to her shoulder and her crooked way of holding her head whenever she was listening intently or concentrating, I saw that
a whole person and their life
cohered clearly around these few details and how, if ever his woman had to be remade, the world could start with the light and line of this pose which was so characteristic of her whole being, drawing down out of the ether her configuration, her structure and alignment, all the lines and contours which make her up as the women she was on that day

...more

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Aug 10, 2017 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: goldsmiths, modern-lit, read-2017, booker-longlist

I had already bought a copy of this book before the Booker longlist was announced, because it won the Goldsmiths Prize and was well received by reviewers whose opinions I trust.

The whole book is a single sentence monologue, which tells quite a conventional story of a mid-life crisis but is rather more interesting than that would suggest, since the topics it covers are wide-ranging and universal. The narrator is a middle-aged engineer, who works for a local council in Mayo. I was aware that ther ...more

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Nov 07, 2017 Jaidee rated it liked it

Recommends it for: insightful middle aged blokes

Recommended to Jaidee by: Lee

Shelves: three-stars-books

3 "much to admire but only kinda liked" stars !!

First of all a big thanks to Lee M. who recommended this book to me. I know he carefully considers which books to recommend to me and I am glad he did this one (remember three stars is a good book to me !)

This book has won and been nominated for a number of awards and I can understand why. The book is written in an open stream of consciousness way with no periods but lots of commas. It carefully delves into the inner life of a middle class middle a ...more

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Aug 14, 2018 Dianne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2018, booker-2017

Exceptional, stellar writing in this little gem, but the structure makes it a bit of a chore to read.

Marcus Conway reflects on his life in the kitchen of his house in Mayo, Ireland on All Soul’s Day. His reflections are represented in a stream of consciousness, which is basically one long, lovely, and remarkable sentence. Just as we do in our own reminiscing, one thing leads to another and Marcus’ memories progress in leaps and bounds across time and space, covering his entire life and all of h ...more

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Sep 15, 2016 Éimhear (A Little Haze) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read2016, literary-fiction, adult-fiction, 4stars, reviewed

July 2017
What a difference a year makes!!!! Since this was picked up by a UK based publishing company it became eligible for the Man Booker Prize and subsequently has made the long list for 2017. THIS IS A FANTASTIC BOOK!!!! It is a book that stays with you and haunts your soul. I'm firmly rooting for it to win.

----

24th November, 2016

Do you ever feel like a complete idiot and just want to rewrite an entire review??? That's how I'm feeling about this particular review! I got things so wrong. I w ...more

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Nov 06, 2016 Peter Boyle rated it really liked it

Shelves: irish, goldsmiths-nominee

How appropriate that the narrator of Solar Bones is an engineer. This novel is quite the feat of engineering itself, written in a stream of consciousness with no full-stops and only the odd comma to punctuate the flow of thoughts. This might sound like a showy literary gimmick but it works brilliantly and I can see why the book has been nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize, an award which seeks to promote fiction that breaks the mould.

Set in a small Irish town on All Souls Day, Marcus Conway sits How appropriate that the narrator of Solar Bones is an engineer. This novel is quite the feat of engineering itself, written in a stream of consciousness with no full-stops and only the odd comma to punctuate the flow of thoughts. This might sound like a showy literary gimmick but it works brilliantly and I can see why the book has been nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize, an award which seeks to promote fiction that breaks the mould.

Set in a small Irish town on All Souls Day, Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table, reminiscing about the events that have brought him to this point. Happily married with two grown-up children and a successful career, he should be content but all he feels is a piercing sadness, "a crying sense of loneliness" for his family. His thoughts drift as he waits for them to return, from caring for his wife during her recent illness, to his son's backpacker journey across Australia, to his daughter's recent provocative art exhibition. Pressure from his job gnaws at him, the recollections of dealings with corrupt politicians and impatient builders adding to his unease. If only he could see the faces of his loved ones, he would immediately feel better:

"something in me would be soothed now if, at this moment, Mairead or one of the kids were to walk through the door and smile or say hello to me, something in me would be calmed by this, a word or a smile or a glance from my wife or children, to find myself in their gaze and know that I was beheld then, this would be something to believe in, another of these articles of faith that seem so important today, a look or a word, enough to hang a whole life on"

This powerful novel is a composite of so many things: an affectionate depiction of rural existence, a tender portrait of family life, a frustrated state of the nation address. For me it excels in the quiet moments where McCormack finds beauty in the mundane, such as a treasured bread knife that has become blunt from years of use: "I love that we are living the kind of life where things are wearing down around us." A revelation in the final pages makes the story all the more poignant (but be forewarned that this twist is spoiled by the blurb). Solar Bones is a major achievement, a daring experiment that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be. Bravo, Mike McCormack. ...more

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Jul 18, 2016 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Shelves: booker-winners-and-listed, read2017, reviewcopy, ebooks

I wanted to read this book when I read its description; I don't think I would have pushed through to the end if it hadn't been on the Man Booker Prize Long List.

To me, it suffers from what many experimental novels do - too much experiment with no clear purpose. I have read many stream of consciousness works. Most memorable to me (and the least known) is the first chapter of Narcopolis, something I probably could have read for the entire work but the author decided to step back from it and just w I wanted to read this book when I read its description; I don't think I would have pushed through to the end if it hadn't been on the Man Booker Prize Long List.

To me, it suffers from what many experimental novels do - too much experiment with no clear purpose. I have read many stream of consciousness works. Most memorable to me (and the least known) is the first chapter of Narcopolis, something I probably could have read for the entire work but the author decided to step back from it and just write the novel after doing it for about 7 pages. How I wish Mike McCormack had made a similar decision!

When you don't have sentences that end and you don't use dialogue markings, you don't give your narrator a chance to take a breath. It may not seem like the narrator needs one, but actually, he or she does. See how I created breaths in the previous sentence by just adding commas? It's funny that my previous review is of a book about radio storytelling, because she has an entire section on signposts and how important they are to a listener. By creating a space to stop and think, to ponder, to absorb a difficult concept, you are engaging the listener. You are asking them to come with you on your journey. When you don't do that, then you are saying you don't give a shit and they're either going to follow you or you will leave them behind.

That is unfortunate, because I think there are some beautiful moments in the prose. But I never felt like I could stop and be with them for a moment or make a note of them because the narrator was still incessantly droning on! There is an overarching structure of sorts that is spoiled by other reviews so don't read them but by the time I reached the end I'd forgotten the beginning because anything important I thought I'd read was taken over by artistic protests and pages and pages of sickness and vomit.

So clearly this is not my style. I'm feeling put out at put myself through it. Depending on the mindset of this year's Man Booker judges, this one might make the shortlist because sometimes experiment is valued above other things. It does have some strange parallels to another title on the longlist - Reservoir 13, in fact I could see the events occurring at the same time, in a strange way.

tl; dr - Solar Bones - most anticipated, ultimately unfulfilling.

I was provided a copy by the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review, based on my request. ...more

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Apr 12, 2017 Anni rated it it was amazing

This is the first time since reading David Foster Wallace that I have found any work of fiction to compare for a mind-blowing literary experience of the first order.
After the first few pages you will forget there are no full stops - although there are natural pauses ... and it all works beautifully.
There is so much good stuff pouring out of Ireland lately, but this surely must become a modern classic to rival Joyce etc.

Here is my (edited for spoilers) review for www.whichbook.net :-

Set in post ...more

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Jan 24, 2021 JimZ rated it it was amazing

This was a 217-page book. There was not one period in the book. So I guess it was one longggg sentence?

There was some beautiful writing in this book. I have to give it 4.5 stars. It held my attention throughout, although there were some pages that dragged….but not too often. You would think with no use of periods in the book It would be hard to follow, but after I got reconciled to that fact, after 3 pages it was pretty smooth sailing. Plus there were paragraphs and paragraph indents to help gui ...more

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Sep 10, 2017 Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it

Shelves: sui-generis, poetry, ireland

Stream of…

First off, DON'T READ THE BLURB on the back cover of this book, or the description above! In its third line, it gives away something that Mike McCormack takes 200 pages to reveal, something that I see as the main point of the entire novel.** Instead, open at the first page and let McCormack's poetic language work on you:

the bell
   the bell as
   hearing the bell as
      hearing the bell as standing here
      the bell being heard standing here
      hearing it ring out through the gre

the bell
   the bell as
   hearing the bell as
      hearing the bell as standing here
      the bell being heard standing here
      hearing it ring out through the grey light of this
      morning, noon or night
      god knows
      this grey day standing here and
      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
      here
      standing in the kitchen
      hearing this bell
      snag my heart and
      draw the whole world into
      being here

It does not stop. Indeed, there is not a single period in the entire novel. I found it a mesmerizing beginning, with a rhythm that teases the ear, an echo of Joyce, the end of "The Dead" or Molly Bloom, fused with something that is all his own, something incantatory, magnificent, in its repetitions of short phrases:

      the village of Louisburgh
      from which the Angelus bell is ringing,
            drawing up the world again
      mountains, rivers and lakes
      acres, roots, and perches
      animal, mineral, vegetable
      covenant, cross and crown
      the given world with
      all its history to brace myself while
      standing here in the kitchen
      of this house

I was about to put this book on my poetry shelf, and still might. However, while this is a poet's language to which McCormack will return, very soon he will get into prose. Very dense prose sometimes, with paragraphs taking up an entire page, without break or major punctuation. It requires a special kind of reading: to let it all flow through you, picking up the images and feelings, but ignoring the details. I did not enjoy this, for I kept wanting to pause, to understand, to put things into some logical sequence, but was frustrated. Only in the last fifty pages or so did I find a rhythm that kept me moving forward yet gave me the details too. And very beautiful details they were; McCormack is a fine writer. Once I finally got into gear, I felt my first strong attachment to the character, and was gripped by the suspense of what would become of him. The end, especially, was quite moving, and finally explained the style in which the novel is written throughout.

The man in the kitchen is Marcus Conway, a civil engineer working for the county authorities in Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland. He lives with his wife Mairead, who is recuperating from a serious illness. Agnes, their eldest child, is an artist in Galway City nearby; their son Darragh is working in the Australian outback as part of a round-the-world trip to find himself. Marcus ranges far and wide in his memories, taking in local politics, global economics, and modernization. He remembers his father, also an engineer. He recalls the early years of his marriage, and its near collapse. He thinks of his time in the seminary, and how he gave up one creed for another, as intense as a religion itself. Like Christ in the wilderness, he meets temptation, and does not give in. All jumbled up. While there seems a kind of hindsight logic to it now, there was a long period when I had no idea what the author's point was, or where he was headed.

Towards the end, however, Marcus's thoughts concentrate on a period of about ten days leading up to the present moment. And as they do the book's focus begins to narrow. It is a novel about a family, and more particularly about a marriage, a long and ultimately very happy marriage. Once I realized that, I could stop reading for the originality of language alone, and fully empathize.

If only the blurb hadn't told me what was coming.**

======

** Reading other reviews and the comments attached to them, I have been pointed to an interview in which the author indicates that he actually wanted the reader to know what the blurb gives away. That does not necessarily make it right. It gave me one kind of reading experience, but I still feel that the other would have been stronger. Besides, an author is responsible for what is between the covers; relying on what is printed on the jacket just seems a weak play, abdicating responsibility for something that he could have made clearer in his own words if he wanted to. ...more

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Aug 08, 2017 Meike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-read, ireland, 2017-mbp

Now Winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award
It is amazing how this text turns the life of an everyman - "husband, father, citizen" - into poetry! McCormack portrays what is mostly considered too common to make it the heart of a story, and in a way, he celebrates the life of those who make up and sustain our societies: Average people.

There are already many interesting and eloquent reviews of this book, so I'd like to restrict myself to challenging one notion that has been frequentl ...more

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Aug 17, 2017 Viv JM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2017, z-2017-author-male, fiction-literary, author-male

This book certainly takes stream-of-consciousness to a whole new level, with not a full stop in sight! I was initially a bit wary, thinking I would find the lack of punctuation and meandering style irritating but I didn't at all and, in fact, I found it rather lovely to read. The family felt so real by the end of the book and it definitely stirred my heartstrings. I hope this makes the Man Booker shortlist, and I would be happy to see it win. ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 Paul Fulcher rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016, goldsmiths-2016, republic-of-consciousness-2017, booker-2017

" this is how you get carried away
sitting here in this kitchen
carried away on an old theme, swept up on a rush of words and associations strewn out across the length and breadth of this country, a hail of images surging through me while at the bottom of the page another story of how"

Now Winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award
Winner of the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2017 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Ineligible for the 2016 Booker Prize (https://www.theguardian. ...more

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Jan 06, 2017 Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, 2016, 2016-goldsmith-shortlist, 2017-republic-of-consciousness, 2017-booker-longlist, goldsmith-winners

Now deservedly the winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.

I first read this book when it was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmith Prize, an award it deservedly went on to win. My original review is at the end of this review.

At the time there were two side issues that caused some debate

A) Had it been overlooked for the Booker or was it in fact not eligible

B) Why was a major plot revelation included on the back cover blurb (see below) and not either included in the book or omitted e ...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Kathleen rated it it was amazing

Man Booker Longlist 2017. Brilliant! It is November 2nd, All Souls’ Day when Catholics pray for the souls in purgatory and the dead return to walk the earth. The Angelus Bells ring out and we meet the narrator Marcus Conway sitting in the kitchen of the home he lived in for most of his life. He was a civil engineer in rural Ireland—in Louisburgh, near Westport, in the County Mayo—married to the schoolteacher Mairead and father of two grown children that confuse him. Agnes is a performance artist ...more

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Sep 25, 2017 Canadian Reader rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ireland

I found this to be a beautiful, rich, and rewarding book. On the surface, SOLAR BONES presents a middle-aged man's reflections on his work and family life. The meditation unfolds one early afternoon in November—the month of All Souls, when ghosts restlessly flit about—while the man is alone in the house he's lived in since he married 25 years ago.

Marcus Conway is an engineer with a metaphysical bent. In due time, the reader learns that his original intentions had been toward the priesthood. Hav I found this to be a beautiful, rich, and rewarding book. On the surface, SOLAR BONES presents a middle-aged man's reflections on his work and family life. The meditation unfolds one early afternoon in November—the month of All Souls, when ghosts restlessly flit about—while the man is alone in the house he's lived in since he married 25 years ago.

Marcus Conway is an engineer with a metaphysical bent. In due time, the reader learns that his original intentions had been toward the priesthood. Having spent two years at a seminary as a young man before a voice told him to “cop himself on” (smarten up), he is well grounded in the humanities: poetry, philosophy, literature. Now, on this November afternoon, he muses about how all things tend towards entropy. The energy of the sun infuses, makes possible, all life on this planet, and it seems that part of the work of humans is to impose rhythm and meaning on existence, create structure, give life its "bones". However, things eventually wind down: they move from order and structure to disorder, dissolution, diffusion, oblivion. This process is working within Marcus himself as he looks back on his life while anxiously awaiting the return of his wife and children who might hold him in their gaze and affirm his existence.

McCormack's work thoughtfully explores the tension between politics and engineering. This may sound dull, but In McCormack’s capable hands, it works beautifully. Marcus reflects that an engineer, taking the long view, can withhold approval for a building that rests on unstable, unreliable foundations, knowing that it is only a matter of time before that the building will fail or fall—injuring, maiming, or killing the vulnerable. A politician's view, on the other hand, is fuelled by the desire for quick results which will keep him basking in his constituents' approval and propel him to ever higher office and power. Marcus’s working life was characterized by repeated wearing encounters with fractious elected officials eager to throw caution to the wind and present voters with pretty public works projects.

A large section of the book is devoted to Marcus's thoughts on a cryptosporidium water-contamination outbreak that leaves many in the Galway vicinity, including Martin's wife, Mairead, disabled for weeks by diarrhea and vomiting. It is a small matter perhaps, but McCormack refers to this illness as a virus when it is actually infection and inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract by microscopic parasitic organisms called Protozoa. As well, his descriptions of Mairead's bedridden days (the bouts of illness in which bodily fluids pour from one end or the other) run overly long. These seem to be fairly minor quibbles with an otherwise accomplished, impressive piece of stream-of-consciousness writing whose form embodies and serves its themes so well.

For me, SOLAR BONES provided a wonderful, unusual reading experience. I look forward to reading McCormack’s other works.

Rating: 4.5 rounded up to 5 ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 Marc rated it really liked it

Shelves: irish-literature, english-literature

Chaos and order at a kitchen table in Western Ireland
Of course, the Irish writer Mike McCormack (° 1965) is not the first one to write an extremely long internal monologue. His illustrious fellow countryman James Joyce and also Virginia Woolf are two well-known predecessors. But McCormack nevertheless managed to give his own twist to the process: we are constantly in the head of Marcus Conway, who - at his kitchen table at home - over 260 pages looks back on recent and less recent phases of his Chaos and order at a kitchen table in Western Ireland
Of course, the Irish writer Mike McCormack (° 1965) is not the first one to write an extremely long internal monologue. His illustrious fellow countryman James Joyce and also Virginia Woolf are two well-known predecessors. But McCormack nevertheless managed to give his own twist to the process: we are constantly in the head of Marcus Conway, who - at his kitchen table at home - over 260 pages looks back on recent and less recent phases of his life and muses about the most various issues. Conway is an engineer at a municipal service in the west of Ireland, and is a concerned husband and father. At first glance, this friendly man seems an unlikely subject for an interesting novel. And yet.

McCormack manages to keep our attention going, even though his stylistic approach is not easy: there is not one full stop in this book, so technically it is a single sentence (of 260 pages). But, of course, invisible marks can be placed, because Marcus's internal monologue works associative, with a chain of large content blocks on the most diverse events or topics.

At first there doesn't seem to be a recurring theme, but after a while it becomes clear that it's about order and chaos, construction and decay. Our protagonist, engineer Conway has a special eye for the wonder of buildings and machines. In his eyes it are human achievements in which divine power is reflected; he even refers to the story that after the Creation God consciously transferred his power to engineers to finish the job. But then of course also countless signs of decay and decline come to his mind: in material objects, in relationships, in societal evolutions. The 2008 financial crisis in particular is a strong focal point, because it led to the collapse of the Irish ‘tiger’-economy. But also the corruption of politicians, building firms, and even fellow engineers is hinted at. And, finally, there's also the mysterious water poisoning occurring in his city (strong references here to ‘La Peste’ van Camus) and of which his wife becomes a victim.

McCormack has done a tremendous job to pass al these musings to us, through the mind of Marcus Conway. Some of the associations are brought in a very poetic way. And though not all excerpts are equally successful, and at times the prose flows a bit in thin air, the whole book really makes a strong impression. And then there is especially the final passage, about 30 pages long, that is truly unparalleled (I'm not going to spoil this one). This McCormack certainly is not for everyone (neither are Woolf nor Joyce), but with this "Solar Bones" my reading year 2020 really started with a loud bang. (3.5 stars) ...more

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Nov 13, 2017 Producervan in Cornville, AZ from New Orleans & L.A. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites-of-van-s

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack. Kindle Edition. Tramp Press. ©2016.

Tramp Press is a publishing company founded in Dublin in 2014 and is an independent publisher that specializes in Irish fiction.

Magnificent. This is by far the best work of adult fiction I've read this year, in fact in several. (And I have read some great ones!) A rare insightful look inside the mind of a family man from County Mayo. A stream-of-consciousness novel like James Joyce; poetic, spare, passionate. Surprising. A brilli ...more

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Jul 18, 2016 Eric Anderson rated it it was amazing

It's easy to scoff at literary fiction which experiments with form given our existing canon of literature which is already packed full of wildly eccentric novels. Everyone from Virginia Woolf to Samuel Beckett to Gertrude Stein to William S Burroughs to Eimear McBride has twisted not only conventional grammar but the shape of the story on the page to say something new about the experience of life and art. So a novel that is one long continuous sentence which lasts more than two hundred pages may ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 William rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: rejected

Thoroughly obnoxious stream of dull thoughts. DNF

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Aug 16, 2017 Robert rated it it was amazing

Now the winner of the 2018 Dublin Literary Awards

Solar Bones is notorious for two things. One is that the book is comprised of one 223 page long sentence and that there's the famous 'spoiler' if you have the Tramp Press edition (which I have, the Canongate edition omits the spoiler). Oh and it won the Goldsmiths prize First of all don't let the one sentence thing bug you. McCormack still uses paragraphs, however they are connected with words such as then, but, when etc so it's readable. Secondly Now the winner of the 2018 Dublin Literary Awards

Solar Bones is notorious for two things. One is that the book is comprised of one 223 page long sentence and that there's the famous 'spoiler' if you have the Tramp Press edition (which I have, the Canongate edition omits the spoiler). Oh and it won the Goldsmiths prize First of all don't let the one sentence thing bug you. McCormack still uses paragraphs, however they are connected with words such as then, but, when etc so it's readable. Secondly don't let the spoiler affect you. Treat it like a game and figure out how the main protagonist came to that predicament.

On a surface level you could say it's about a man, Marcus Conway, reflecting on life but obviously the book goes into more depth. Solar Bones, mostly is about politics, the absurdity of government decisions, the drive to be popular, the lengths a politician will go to in order to pander to the media, which is another big theme in the novel. Here media is seen to shock and forecast doom in every possible way. In this regard one could say that there are parallels with Ali Smith as she tackles the same topics in her latest book, Autumn.

Also there are elements of Tom McCarthy's Satin Island, in the sense that everyday occurrences play a big role for the main protagonist. One example is when Marcus is eating a sandwich and finally realising how great life can be (although what happens afterwards kind of makes that premise sour) and there are further 'Satin Island' moments in the novel. However as banal as they seem they are important and form some poignant allegories, my personal favourite being the cake knife/married life section.

McCormack makes sure the grey cells are buzzing about in Solar Bones and as with most of the books on this year's Booker longlist, the novel will benefit from a second reading.

One last thing? is the one sentence used to prove to us readers that life is like one long sentence? I noticed the book does not end with a full stop so is McCormack hinting that no matter what life goes on? As I stated Solar Bones is a novel that has long lasting after effects (and this is just one of the questions I have), which, for me, is a sign of a great novel. ...more

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Jun 02, 2017 Dan Williamson rated it really liked it

This is a beautiful book. You may have learned by now that this is a novel without periods. Others might have told you not to be deterred, that this does not detract from the story nor its readability. They are right. The format does not detract but conjures up the perfect atmosphere for what it contains. Solar Bones does not read so much like a relentless single sentence as it does a river-like flow broken up, via unpunctuated paragraphs, by plentiful pleasant whirlpools and eddies.

The river r ...more

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May 21, 2017 Barbara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: irish-books, award-winner, literary-fiction, 2017-reads, book-club

I bought this book last summer on a book buying spree in Belfast - 3 bookstores and Tesco's in one morning! I didn't get to it right away, and when it was the April read for my book club, wasn't able to attend the meeting nor finish the book. However, I was pulled in immediately by the story, and strong sense of place in the novel, which is set in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. The title shows up early in this phrase: “rites, rhythms and rituals / upholding the world like solar bones”.

This I bought this book last summer on a book buying spree in Belfast - 3 bookstores and Tesco's in one morning! I didn't get to it right away, and when it was the April read for my book club, wasn't able to attend the meeting nor finish the book. However, I was pulled in immediately by the story, and strong sense of place in the novel, which is set in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. The title shows up early in this phrase: “rites, rhythms and rituals / upholding the world like solar bones”.

This is an unconventionally written novel. There are no periods and no chapters. Fortunately the author uses commas and paragraphs. I soon overcame the lack of punctuation as the voice of the main character, Marcus Conway, husband, and engineer, and father of two adult children, never faltered. His daughter is an artist who is exploring experimental forms, and his son is wandering Australia (an aside: many young Australians take extended foreign trips of months or years, but it seems less common for Europeans to spend months wandering around there). Conway describes the machinations of local politicians, and corruption that abounds even in rural areas. I appreciated McCormack's descriptions of the engineering involved in his work. I was struck by the care he took to illustrate details of construction. This was not simply a writing exercise, but a critical component for creating the portrait of Conway as a man of integrity.

Conway is also a caring husband and working to show his deep love for his daughter and son. They engage in back-and-forths as each of these adult children work to establish their separateness from their parents and success at being independent. Conway also possesses a deep love for Mayo. The economic crash that Ireland experienced beginning in 2008 was still to come. But we see signs that things are amiss. There is a development of a local and then national crisis that affects his own family. There is a hint of dystopia, which may be how people felt when the Celtic Tiger died with the end of the boom.

This book deserves the numerous awards and recognition it has received. I am sure there is an audience for it in America. ...more

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Aug 31, 2017 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I'm giving this 2 stars because I've read worse. And, also, if I allowed myself to fully comprehend how much time and energy I just wasted on getting through this book, I would have to commit seppuku. Today I choose to live!

Strike One: A major plot element is portrayed erroneously.

Crytposporidium is neither coliform (a bacteria) nor a virus. It is an enteric pathogen of the parasitic class. (And, no, "viral parasite" isn't acceptable either.). McCormack's insistence on classifying "crypto" as a ...more

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Oct 03, 2016 Neil rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016, 2017-booker, 2016-goldsmiths, 2017-rofc

FURTHER UPDATE: On reflection, I think I have made a complete fool of myself with comments about the blurb. I now think that the blurb on the back is quite possibly the cleverest thing about it. The author has set the scene and the atmosphere for his book without using any of his novel to do it! He wants you to know what is explained on the back, so you do need to read it.

UPDATE: Since writing this, I have discovered that you should ignore my warnings about the blurb. The author wants you to rea FURTHER UPDATE: On reflection, I think I have made a complete fool of myself with comments about the blurb. I now think that the blurb on the back is quite possibly the cleverest thing about it. The author has set the scene and the atmosphere for his book without using any of his novel to do it! He wants you to know what is explained on the back, so you do need to read it.

UPDATE: Since writing this, I have discovered that you should ignore my warnings about the blurb. The author wants you to read the blurb. However, he says this is because he wants you to be in a privileged position compared to the protagonist, but, as far as I can see, it actually puts you in the same position. However, I change my advice because the blurb is deliberate. This also means I can change my rating, which is good because I really wanted to give this 4 stars!

Original review:

It is probably too late to say this to people who are reading this review, but if it is at all possible for you to read this book without reading the blurb on the back cover, I would strongly advise that: your experience of the book will be approximately ten-times better if you can avoid knowing what it says on that back cover. Unfortunately, most people will browse in a book shop and read that back cover to decide whether they are interested in buying the book.

Anyway, to the book itself. It is notable for being a 217-page sentence: there is not a single full-stop. There are paragraph breaks but they nearly all occur mid-thought. This does have the effect of making it very difficult to find a place to stop reading at bed time, but I am not complaining. It is an interesting structure and is probably the best way to support the style of the book which is effectively a stream of consciousness and associative memories. We follow the main character as his thoughts meander through his life while he stands in his kitchen (this might sound a bit dull, but it really isn't!) - his wife, his son and daughter, his job, some current events. They all appear and then sometimes re-appear as his memories flicker from one topic to another. But the randomness does not stop a clear story emerging.

I loved the start of the book which is very poetic. The poetic writing style re-appears at the end, too. But, in the main part of the book, the disjointed structure remains but the narrative, apart from the lack of punctuation, becomes much more "normal". I much preferred the combination of experimental narrative and experimental structure to the bits that are just experimental structure.

So, in the end, I deducted a star because the main part of the book didn't excite me as much as the start and end. And then I deducted another star because the publishers spoiled it for me with the crazy stuff they wrote on the back cover. I'll say it again: if you can avoid reading the back cover, you will enjoy this book far more than if you do read it.

But, all that said, this is an absorbing book told in a dynamic and intense way. I can see why it is on the Goldsmiths Prize short list and I would certainly look to read more of McCormack's work (although I'd avoid reading his publisher's blurb next time). ...more

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Dec 05, 2019 Michael Livingston rated it really liked it

This is a beautiful, immersive book. The stream of consciousness approach doesn't feel as realistic as Ducks, Newburyport, but that lets McCormack write some stunningly lyrical passages. The main character's memories unspool as an hour or so passes - each set piece is sparkling with insight and wit and the pieces gradually join together to build up a moving picture of a life well lived in rural Ireland. It's lovely stuff - I'm just going to have to read every Goldsmith's Prize winner of all time ...more

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“her voice suddenly gone as if it had snagged on the mist and was carried off into the failing light, leaving the phone dead in my hand, a warm sliver with the screen fading like some luminous shard from outer space which had traveled across stellar distances at great speed to arrive here in my hand where its glow was now losing its heat, gone” — 6 likes

“something that at first sight appeared to be the luminous bones of some massive, extinct creature, now disinterred, with its ribs gathered into a neat bundle around the thick stump of a massive spinal column which time and the elements had polished to such a cool ceramic gloss that if I were to leave my hand on it I would have been surprised if it felt like anything other than glass” — 6 likes

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