This Plague of Souls

Praise

Praise for Mike McCormack

“When venturing into the realm of the macabre, a writer gains a distinct advantage if he has a sense of discipline and a sense of humor . . . Mike McCormack has both to spare.”
─The New York Times Book Review

“Mike McCormack has created a narrative of such power and precision . . . The book, ​contemporary and tragic and funny,​ is ​a delight.”
​​ —​NPR.org​

“The ordinary is hallowed by the originality of its expression . . . the writing is so precise and consistent. Solar Bones is a successful experimental novel, but more than that it is a good human story.”
—​The Wall Street Journal​
 
“A heady rumination on modern life as otherworldly as it is grounded in reality.”
—Entertainment Weekly
 
“McCormack’s obsessions at times converge with those explored by Ian McEwan, Will Selfand J. G. Ballard, but his clever ideas and fluid, gracefully morbid style are all his own.”
─GQ

“​A Joycean novel about illness, suffering and work​ . . . ​remarkable . . . poetic​. It is the vivid attention to detail, both in Ulysses, James Joyce’s masterpiece, and in Solar Bones, which make both these novels resonate like that evening bell.”
​​—The Economist 

“Extraordinary . . . an intoxicating experimental novel. Such experimentation may make some people hesitant; don’t be, the prose flows more like poetry, and is a sombre joy to read.”
—Financial Times​

“Excellence is always rare and often unexpected: we don’t necessarily expect masterpieces even from the great. Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones is exceptional indeed: an extraordinary novel by a writer not yet famous but surely destined to be acclaimed by anyone who believes that the novel is not dead and that novelists are not merely lit-fest fodder for the metropolitan middle classes.”
—The Guardian

“With stylistic gusto, and in rare, spare, precise and poetic prose, Mike McCormack gets to the music of what is happening all around us. One of the best novels of the year.” 
—Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic

“Pure enchantment from an otherworldly talent. I admired the hell out of this book.”
—Eleanor Catton, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries

“McCormack’s language is lovely, lyrical . . . his humor is dark, macabre; the words glimmer like a spell.”
─Time Out

“The greatest Irish novel of the decade.”
─Irish Times

“An impressive meditation, as Joyce would say, ‘upon all the living and the dead’ . . . Mike McCormack is a gifted Irish writer.”
—​Minneapolis Star Tribune​

“The finest book yet from one of Ireland’s most singular contemporary writers.”
—Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

“McCormack mimes the deep traditions of Irish short fiction—Samuel Beckett, Frank O’Connor and John McGahern all come to mind—and twists it a bit into a new directions with stories that are uniquely contemporary, often wildly funny, and always visionary. Beneath his clear, precise style is a renegade in action, working the form into new shapes. Just when you think it’s impossible for another great book of stories to come roaring out of Ireland, along comes a brilliant collection, Forensic Songs.“
—David Means, author of The Secret Goldfish

“By turns subdued, witty and raucous. All 12 stories in this collection glisten with insight and poignancy.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“[McCormack] effortlessly weaves Raymond Carver’s lucidity together with Franz Kafka’s otherworldly absurdity to craft narratives that seem familiar and satisfyingly strange at the same time.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review