This Plague of Souls

Description

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 what’s happened to his family-a man who’ll 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 evasions, a verbal game of cat and mouse that leaps from Nealon’s 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.” McCormack’s existential noir is a terse and brooding exploration of the connections between rural Ireland and the globalized cruelties of the twenty­first 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.Praise for This Plague of Souls

The Times Literary Supplement Best Books of the Year 2023
The New Statesman Best Books of the Year 2023
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024

“A memorable attempt to evoke the murky contemporary relationship between individuals and unseen global systems. As its mysteries compound, the novel constructs a vast speculative network in which everything appears conspiratorially connected—‘art and politics, light and dark, past and future’—yet nothing is really understood.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Tightly structured, with elements of noir.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“A suspenseful and beautiful work by a writer who hates where he believes the world is headed and is attuned to the simple joys we are in danger of losing.”
—The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Terror, crime and sinister phone-calls — a magnificent Irish novel. For the most part, it reads like a thriller, shot through with a pervading atmosphere of precarity and uncertainty . . . a beautifully written collision of mystery and metaphysics.”
―The Telegraph

“McCormack’s prose is quite simply the best around, his sentences a joy, clear and precise, as uncluttered as the west of Ireland landscape they describe.”
—Irish Examiner

“McCormack is a singular talent, lucid sentences locking into an eerie and unforgettable edifice. It has brutal physicality and arch metaphysics.”
—The Scotsman

“Drawing these threads of heartbreak, surreal menace and the possible imminent collapse of the world together, McCormack weaves a web that holds the reader in suspense to the end—and beyond.”
―The Spectator

“McCormack’s language is evocative, perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere he builds throughout the book . . . As in Solar Bones, McCormack displays his gift for describing landscapes and situations that might seem unlovely, but for the fact that they are loved by the author’s observing eye . . . This is a strange novel, sinister yet hopeful, a descent into darkness that somehow manages to rise into a ringing light.”
—The Guardian

“When someone tells Nealon a summary of his life he is astonished that suddenly the messy existence he has led sounds as though it makes sense. This Plague of Souls reminds us that fiction can do that, make sense of the jumble of our lives, even if it doesn’t provide all the answers. Not everyone will love this book and its mysteries — the way it acknowledges but estranges the reader — but those who do will not forget it. Imagine if all writers took this much trouble.”
—John Self, The Times (UK)

“Suffused in a sense of indeterminate dread, yet richly committed to the tangible realities of its setting . . . [This Plague of Souls] is an enigmatic, unsettling, Pinteresque masterpiece of withheld information.”
—Nat Segnit, The Times Literary Supplement

“A world of chaos and instability, with a troubled multi-dimensional character at its centre and an exquisitely rendered rural Ireland of beauty and darkness as the backdrop. McCormack is a cryptic, elliptical writer, forensic in his plotting and canny at teasing his readers.”
—Financial Times

“Operating in a minor key, nudging us coyly towards an eerily personal apocalypse, the new book creates an utterly distinctive, utterly contemporary mood.”
—The Irish Times

“McCormack’s previous novel, Solar Bones, was robbed when it only made the longlist for the Booker Prize in 2017. Centred on the everyman psyche of an Irish engineer, it had a poignant twist I’m not about to spoil here – but if you’ve read it, let me say now that the trick he pulled in that book has nothing on the high-jinks afoot here . . . It’s all very slippery and endlessly suggestive, as the circular wandering gives way to dystopian horror and a parable of complicity and guilt on an interconnected planet.”
—Daily Mail

“Ultimately, this is a mood piece with a creeping, mesmeric tone of its own . . . Seek out this unique proposition by this inimitable writer.”
—The Irish Independent

“In a further step to cement his place at the top table of contemporary Irish novelists, McCormack has crafted another perfectly plotted opus . . . Perfect reading for cold autumn nights.”
—Buzz Magazine (UK)

“[Mike McCormack] has an uncanny gift for presenting a vivid realist depiction of the contemporary west of Ireland but layering it through with unexpected genre notes – there are elements of noir, dystopia, existential mystery. Built on lines of perfectly cadenced dialogue, [This Plague of Souls] is easily on a par with its feted predecessor, Solar Bones.”
—Kevin Barry, The New Statesman

“In This Plague of Souls, a whip-tight narrative often spills into poetry without ever losing its emotional heft . . . There are echoes of Seamus Heaney in McCormack’s pinpoint depictions of rural life.”
—Business Post

“This is the reason Mike McCormack is one of Ireland’s best-loved novelists; he is the most modestly brilliant writer we have. His delicate abstractions are woven from the ordinary and domestic—both metaphysical and moving, McCormack’s work asks the big questions about our small lives.”
—Anne Enright, Booker-winning author of The Gathering

“This Plague of Souls is written in perfectly-pitched cadences. It captures with exquisite care of a man ambushed by loss and fear, by hovering forces that are mysterious and otherworldly and beyond his control. It further establishes Mike McCormack as one of the best novelists writing now.”
—Colm Tóibín, author of The Master

“A small novel crammed with big ideas, This Plague of Souls is at once though-provoking and deeply satisfying.”
—Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses

“A sombre tale shot through with glints of dark humour, in which the sins of the past at once haunt and illuminate the present. A compelling read, with a thrillingly undecided ending.”
—John Banville, Booker-winning author of The Sea

“This is a darkly marvelous novel: at once intimate, domestic, and poignant, then speculative and hard-boiled and wild. That Mike can be so convincing, so skilled in both registers is remarkable. That he can do it concurrently is genius.”
—Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

“Mike McCormack’s fiction has always had a philosophical bent, and none more so than in This Plague of Souls. In Nealon, we’re given access to the mind of a man minutely attuned to every movement and vibration of his own consciousness, a man who is psychologically astute but receptive, too, to the hidden rhythms and frequencies of reality. There is a beautiful surreal feel to this novel, with its limbo landscape and night-time drives, but it is Nealon’s meditation on family and fatherhood—and what the loss of those might mean—that will linger long in the reader afterwards.”
—Mary Costello, author of Academy Street

“It was deliciously sinister, and reminded me that nobody captures the cold beauty and cruelty of the world like Mike; I just know I’m going to be chewing it over in my mind for weeks.”
—Sara Baume, author of A Line Made by Walking

“Evocative prose conjures vivid images of the brooding Irish countryside and Nealon’s bleak existence.”
—Publishers Weekly

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 Self and 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 Mike McCormack is a novelist and short story writer from the West of Ireland. His novel Solar Bones won the Goldsmiths Prize, the BGE Irish Book of the Year Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His other works are Notes from a Coma, Crowe’s Requiem, Forensic Songs, and Getting It in the Head, which was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He lives in Galway.Opening the door and crossing the threshold in the dark triggers the phone in Nealon’s pocket. He lowers his bag to the floor and looks at the screen; it’s not a number he recognises. For the space of one airless heartbeat he has a sense of things drifting sideways, draining over an edge.
     The side of his head is bathed in the forensic glow of the screen light.
     “Yes?”
     “You’re back.”
     “Hello?”
     “Welcome home, Nealon.”
     “Who am I talking to?”
     “Only a friend would call at this hour.”
     The voice at the other end is male and downbeat, not the sort you would choose to listen to in the dark. Nealon is aware of himself in two minds—the voice on the phone drawing against his immediate instinct to orient himself in the dark hallway. He turns to stand with his back to the wall.
     “You know who I am?”
     “That’s the least of what I know.”
     “What do you want?”
     Two paces to his left, Nealon spots a light switch. He reaches out with his spare hand and throws it, throws it back, then throws it again. Nothing. Half his face remains shrouded in blue light. He takes five steps to open a door and passes into what he senses is an open room. A swipe of his hand over a low shadow finds a table; he draws out a chair and takes the rest of the phone call sitting in the dark.
     “I thought I’d give you a shout,” the voice says.
     “You have the wrong number.”
     “I don’t think so.”
     “I’m going to hang up.”
     “There’s no rush.”
     “Goodbye.”
     “We should meet up.”
     “No.”
     “Not tonight, you’re just in the door, you need some rest.”
     “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
     “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
     “I am.”
     “In a day or so when you’re settled.”
     “Not then, not ever.”
     “We’ll talk again. One last thing.”
     “What is it?”
     “Don’t be sitting there in the dark, the mains switch is over the back door.”
     And with that the phone goes dead in Nealon’s hand.
 
 
Nealon pushes aside his immediate wish to dwell on the phone call: Who is it from; what is it about? He needs to orient himself in the house so that is what he sets himself to. After a quick scan through his phone, he finds the torch app and sweeps the room with the light at arm’s length.
     To his right is another small room barely six feet wide, with a fridge and cooker, shelves along one wall. There’s also a solid door over which sits a junction box with a complex array of meters and fuses. The mains switch is at the end but it’s too high to reach so he drags a chair from the table.
     He steps up and throws the switch; light floods from the hallway into the kitchenette and living room. The table sits beneath a large curtained window and beyond it is a sink and worktop with white cupboards overhead. Everything is flat-pack melamine, all the units date from sometime in the eighties. Against the left-hand wall sits a three-seater couch over which hangs a picture of the Sacred Heart with its orange votive light now glowing beneath.
     He reaches out and flicks the switch. The walls come up in a cool green glow against which the pine table seems warm and homely.
     There are five doors off the L-shaped hallway. The first is a bathroom with a shower cubicle tucked behind the door and a toilet beneath a small window which looks out from the back of the house. Behind each of the other doors are three bedrooms of equal size with a double bed and built-in wardrobes. Pillows and duvets are stacked on the beds, but all the wardrobes are empty.
     Back into the hall.
     There is something coercive in the flow of the house, the way it draws him through it. These are doors that have to be opened, rooms that have to be entered and stood in. He catches himself looking up and examining the ceiling. What does he expect to find there?
     Inside the front door is a sitting room where a laminate floor runs to a marble fireplace with a low mantelpiece. To the left and right of the chimney breast, empty bookshelves reach to the ceiling. In the middle of the floor is a single armchair, angled towards a large television. Its shape and plain covering make it an obvious partner to the couch in the living room.
     Empty and all as the house is, it still has the residual hum and bustle of family life. It feels clean and it has been carefully maintained. Not the raw cleanness of a last-minute blitz before visitors arrive but that ongoing effort which keeps it presentable to any sudden need.
     Nealon becomes aware of a low vibration throughout the room and stands listening for a moment. He lowers his hand to the radiator and finds that the heat has come on. The house is beginning to warm up.
 
 
Over the front door, a globe light illumines a stretch of gravel frontage closed in by a pair of black gates. Outside lies the main road, the small village to the right, less than half a mile distant and the coast road running to the left. Lights are visible in the distance but all is quiet. No cars at this hour.
     An uneven grassed area flows into the night, darkening at a tall hedge that leans towards the gable of the house. A cement walk takes him around to the back door where the rear garden runs about thirty yards to a sod fence at the end of the site. He passes by the garage, locked and lightless, and moves deeper into the darkness where the shadowed outline of a small car sits hunched beneath overhanging trees. It has the shape and sheen of a giant armoured insect sheltering for the night. Beyond the trees the looming outlines of the hayshed and the cow barn are visible. Light from the living-room window reveals the central-heating pump on the far gable and he returns once more to the front door through which he re-enters the house.
     A glance at his Nokia confirms that he has been here twelve minutes. He punches in a ten-digit number and listens. After several moments the call goes through to voicemail. Nealon speaks.
     “Hello Olwyn. If you get this, I’m home. Give me a ring. Love to you and Cuan.”
     He is tempted to sit for a while and gather his thoughts, but he knows that if he does he could be up for hours. The phone call still nags at him but he had better get some rest. He goes into the first bedroom and kicks his boots off, strips down to his T-shirt and pulls the duvet over him.
     He is asleep before his eyes close, drifting off like a man with a long, hard day behind him.
     And if the circumstances of his being here 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.US

Additional information

Weight	13 oz
Dimensions	5.5000 × 8.2500 in
Imprint	Soho Press
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09781641296243
ISBN-10	1641296240
Author	Mike McCormack
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC025000, FIC039000
Subjects	empathy, prison, revenge, journey, dark, noir, Irish, ocean, ireland, speculative fiction, humanity, obsession, surrealism, teacher, novels, spirit, literary fiction, metaphysical, magical realism, husband, jealousy, existential, alcoholic, fiction books, books fiction, fiction psychological, FIC039000, aging, mental health, psychology, healing, Recovery, divorce, marriage, anxiety, relationships, meditation, family, health, nutrition, england, love, domestic, fiction, mystery, Friendship, death, memory, identity, courage, FIC025000, science fiction, Fear