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Invisible Schemes
No-one is buying McCann’s drugs, and he wants to know why.
McCann sends his nephew, Mark, into the housing schemes that make up his crumbling empire. Mark’s reports of an omnipresent steel ball, a never-ending football match, encroaching gardens and nocturnal vigilante poets close in around McCann. Each word is more binding than the last, tangling McCann in answers that only create more questions.
Faced with the choice between investigating further and escaping the world he helped create, McCann continually sends Mark back into the scheme. With nothing but his senses and his endless idealism, Mark melts into the fabric of McCann’s empire. It is a place that cannot be explained, only observed; a labyrinth that has no end or beginning, where humanity perseveres in strange and mysterious ways.
Invisible Schemes is a biting satire that shines a light on the marginalized working class and how reality, time, and all other certainties are blurred beyond recognition to those who aren’t paying attention.
McCann sends his nephew, Mark, into the housing schemes that make up his crumbling empire. Mark’s reports of an omnipresent steel ball, a never-ending football match, encroaching gardens and nocturnal vigilante poets close in around McCann. Each word is more binding than the last, tangling McCann in answers that only create more questions.
Faced with the choice between investigating further and escaping the world he helped create, McCann continually sends Mark back into the scheme. With nothing but his senses and his endless idealism, Mark melts into the fabric of McCann’s empire. It is a place that cannot be explained, only observed; a labyrinth that has no end or beginning, where humanity perseveres in strange and mysterious ways.
Invisible Schemes is a biting satire that shines a light on the marginalized working class and how reality, time, and all other certainties are blurred beyond recognition to those who aren’t paying attention.
142 pages, Paperback
Published August 19, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 10, 2022
Invisible Schemes by John McGlade centres around McCann who sends his nephew Mark to venture into a multitude of surreal pockets of humanity coined ‘schemes’. Mark is trying to find out why no one is buying McCann’s drugs and yet returns with dozens of retellings of the remarkable schemes he finds.
Every place he enters has uncanny resemblances to reality, yet with an abnormal, unique feature such as a never ending football game, a world without mirrors or an ever changing maze of allies. Each chapter gives a thought provoking, hilarious, satirical vignette into a life controlled or changed by a freak event or, more often than not, a corrupt political power.
This urban fantasy is incredibly written giving the reader a clear sense of each and every one of these obscure schemes. McGlade’s strange, poetic insights can teach us all a moral lesson in their own distinctly profound way.
Every place he enters has uncanny resemblances to reality, yet with an abnormal, unique feature such as a never ending football game, a world without mirrors or an ever changing maze of allies. Each chapter gives a thought provoking, hilarious, satirical vignette into a life controlled or changed by a freak event or, more often than not, a corrupt political power.
This urban fantasy is incredibly written giving the reader a clear sense of each and every one of these obscure schemes. McGlade’s strange, poetic insights can teach us all a moral lesson in their own distinctly profound way.
November 1, 2024
Dazzling
Highly original in style and content. So, some chapters are like catalogue descriptions of housing schemes (aka 'estates'), and these are interspersed with an ongoing narrative about a gangland hardman and his private-school-educated nephew. Class, drugs, aspiration - these are all here. John McGlade is a master of combining his fundamental themes with dazzling language and imagery, eg 'Ye should know better than tae ask where money comes fae... if ye've got enough ae it ye can stiy invisible... Hink yer colleges an schools gie a f*ck where their fees come fae?' (66% of the way through) and 'Nothin adds up wi money. It can bend light, make hings disappear.' Highly recommended!
Highly original in style and content. So, some chapters are like catalogue descriptions of housing schemes (aka 'estates'), and these are interspersed with an ongoing narrative about a gangland hardman and his private-school-educated nephew. Class, drugs, aspiration - these are all here. John McGlade is a master of combining his fundamental themes with dazzling language and imagery, eg 'Ye should know better than tae ask where money comes fae... if ye've got enough ae it ye can stiy invisible... Hink yer colleges an schools gie a f*ck where their fees come fae?' (66% of the way through) and 'Nothin adds up wi money. It can bend light, make hings disappear.' Highly recommended!
July 3, 2025
‘A challenging read that exposes society in a humorous way’
I did struggle to follow the story and couldn’t quite get my head around the layout of the chapters. However, the use of descriptive language was strong throughout and I enjoyed the dialogue between Mark and McCann. Definitely an interesting take on societal issues.
I did struggle to follow the story and couldn’t quite get my head around the layout of the chapters. However, the use of descriptive language was strong throughout and I enjoyed the dialogue between Mark and McCann. Definitely an interesting take on societal issues.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews