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Solar Bones

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Solar Bones

By: Mike McCormack
Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
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WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
BGE IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016

Marcus Conway has come a long way to stand in the kitchen of his home and remember the rhythms and routines of his life. Considering with his engineer's mind how things are constructed - bridges, banking systems, marriages - and how they may come apart.

Mike McCormack captures with tenderness and feeling, in continuous, flowing prose, a whole life, suspended in a single hour.

Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Scary
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Critic reviews

"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"
"Pure enchantment from an otherworldly talent. I admired the hell out of this book" (ELEANOR CATTON, Man Booker Prize-winning author of THE LUMINARIES)
"Wonderfully original, distinctly contemporary . . . delivered in lucid, lyrical prose . . . A pleasure to read"
"McCormack has always been among the most adventurous and ambitious Irish writers. Solar Bones, written in one single sonorous sentence, tells the story of a family in contemporary Ireland" (COLM TÓIBÍN)
"The writing catches fire as we draw near to the void, pass over into death itself, and therein confront the truth that even in a fallen universe, when all distractions tumble away, the only adequate response to our being is astonishment"
"Exhilarating" (LISA McINERNEY)
"Hauntingly sad, but also frequently very funny - Proust reconfigured by Flann O'Brien" (Literary Review)
"Beautiful . . . Compulsive"
"This is prose that reads as if it is being thought . . . reduced me to tears"
"A masterpiece" (Blake Morrison)
All stars
Most relevant
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the perfomance of the reader. It gave an insight into the beauty of a long term loving relationship and the local politics of Ireland during the recent recession.

A wonderful book, wonderfully read.

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I loved this book . it was witty. I was shocked at the ending .

excellent in all ways

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Not so much a story, more a gentle memory of family and passing of time.

Beautifully narrated

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I will now find and read it in a printed version, and look for other books he's written.

Stunning!

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Maybe this book loses something in the listening as it seemed to me that it was more an exercise in technique rather than story-telling. It’s not bad and is well delivered by Tim Gerard Reynolds but, in the end, he is just relaying events, feelings, frustrations and observations that the majority of listeners will have already experienced for real. It reminded me of “Eileen” in as far as I kept waiting or something to happen.

Not Bad

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