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This Plague of Souls
This Plague of Souls | Mike McCormack
3 posts | 2 read | 2 to read
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 whats happened to his familya man wholl 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 unknown dangers, a verbal game of cat and mouse that leaps from Nealons 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. McCormacks existential noir is a terse and brooding exploration of the connections between rural Ireland and the globalized cruelties of the twenty-first 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.
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review
JenP
This Plague of Souls | Mike McCormack
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I loved Solar bones and I very much liked this one too which is considered part 2 in a 3 book “series” with solar bones. You can read my review on the blog (link below). I hope this makes the booker list

https://thereadersroom.org/2024/07/19/this-plague-of-souls-by-mike-mccormack/

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JenP
This Plague of Souls | Mike McCormack
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And if the circumstances of his being alone in this bed at this hour rest within the arc of those grand constructs that turn in the night — politics, finance, trade — it is not clear how his loneliness resolves in the indifference with which such constructs regard him across the length and breadth of his sleep.

review
Decalino
This Plague of Souls | Mike McCormack
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Nealon has returned to an empty house in western Ireland after a prolonged absence when he receives the first of a series of strange phone calls. Slowly it becomes clear who Nealon is and why he has been away, but this atmospheric and mysterious novel is more interested in raising questions than answering them. Brief and somewhat surreal, this would make a cool indie film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.