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 afternoon at his kitchen table and
considers the events that took him away and then brought him home again.
Funny
and strange, McCormack’s ambitious and other-worldly novel plays with
form and defies convention. This is profound new work is by one of
Ireland’s most important contemporary novelists. A beautiful and
haunting elegy, this story of order and chaos, love and loss captures
how minor decisions ripple into waves and test our integrity every day.
F - 2312
