Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting. Perhaps the first half, which felt like a different novel, one that felt familiar in an Irish rural novel kind of way, featuring a lonesome protagonist, Nealon, who has returned to the abandoned home and found it empty of his wife Olwyn and child Cuan, who hadn’t waited to hear the outcome of the charges that have kept him in prison the last 10 months.

An Old Irish Cottage of Memories

As he wanders about the house, certain objects awaken memories, of his parents, now long dead and more recently his wife Olwyn, who removed everything in the house that had belonged to them and did him a favour by cleaning and renovating it single-handedly. In protest he drags their old couch into the back lawn and just sits there.

We don’t know why he was imprisoned, what he was charged with, who his wife was, where she is.

The only evidence of a life or connection outside this empty cottage, is a persistent caller, who calls every day and seems to know everything about his life.

He conveniently repeats to Nealon everything he knows about him, though we don’t know if any of it is true, because the protagonist rejects everything he says, neither accepts or denies and even in the thoughts shared on the page, chooses not to think about (or the writer chooses not to share) any thoughts relating to the activities he describes.

I do not highlight one single passage until page 64 and then it is this I note, words exchanged in one of their cryptic telephone conversations:

‘I’ll tell you this: there is a great shortage of imagination out there, you couldn’t underestimate it.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. I have noticed that there is no shortage of foolishness.’

An Alternate Reality or A Spark of Imagination?

Finally they will meet and the story becomes more surreal, at this point I thought, this is actually going to be revealed as science fiction, there is probably an alternative reality going on here – isn’t there? Because it’s starting to get kind of frustrating almost boring; but clever yes, the writing is polished, it’s relatively easy to read, but for this reader, there is nothing meaningful or all that intriguing about it, I feel the edge of disappointment ahead of me, as there are so few pages left to read. I start theorising and make up my own story about what is going on (I won’t bore you with that).

As the man says himself articulating both his conundrum and my own :

‘So I understand the architecture of the whole thing, the grandeur and ambition of the entire construct. But not the motive behind it. What is it all about? What does it hope to achieve? Is it some noble enterprise – as I hope it is – or something else entirely? Something squalid and rotten to the core.’

Scattered throughout the text are occasional sentences that hint at Nealon’s understanding, words that come from his ‘now’ wherever that is.

It took him a long time to recognise it as chaos and he wonders now how he could have mistaken it as anything else.

We have learned that in prison there was a complete lack of mind-sharpening engagement that threatened to turn in on itself and close him down, however nothing about the character thus far indicates his capability. He is a loner, just as his name indicates, Nealon – a.l.o.n.e with a capital N.

Curiosity Can Kill the Cat

Ultimately, despite his better judgement, out of curiosity or nothing better to do, or perhaps he really is interested in finding out where his wife and child are, he is lured into meeting the man, and while focusing on not really saying anything, he may have talked himself into a trap.

As he travels from the West of Ireland towards the city, he becomes aware of some kind of threat looming over the country.

On the edge of insight, when it comes it may be too late. This constant feeling that he is about to realise something drives the novel forward and creates a sort of tension.

In a way, it reminded of the book I just read Margarita Garcia Robayo’s The Delivery, she uses a similar introspective technique to keep the reader from knowing exactly what is going on, however throughout the course of novel, there are many more morsels of humanity, she too is a loner, but life and love push their way in on her – you can’t escape the community.

The author who describes the novel as ‘part metaphysical thriller, part roman noir’ did ask himself the question and was aware he may alienate some readers, as he says in an interview with the Irish Times.

Would it be possible to write a book of which it would be impossible to speak, where I don’t know what happens, and how to make that artistically credible and skilful without it coming across as clueless, as an authorial failure?

Why Did I Read This?

I chose to read this book because of all the good reviews of Solar Bones, which I will still read, and also because Mike McCormack was picked up by Tramp Press, one of my favourite Irish publishers, who also publish my top two Irish authors, Sara Baume and Doireann Ni Ghriofa.

Author, Lisa McInerney’s blurb on the back cover was closest to my reading experience, when she says:

‘A darkly marvellous novel: at once intimate, domestic, and poignant, then speculative and hard-boiled and wild’

Mike McCormack, Author

Mike McCormack’s previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Crowe’s Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012).

In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Solar Bones (Tramp Press, 2016) won the Goldsmiths Prize, the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for Best Novel and Best Book, and the Dublin International Literary Award (previously known as the IMPAC), and was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Mike McCormack lives in Galway with his family.