Every so often a novel comes along that so perfectly unites form and content that you feel as if you’re wading through a dream. Irish author McCormack’s ‘Solar Bones’ is one such novel. We join Marcus Conway – in some ways your standard everyman, in other ways highly unique – at a singular moment on a singular day. From here, we follow his train of thought as it unspools across personal and professional relationships, ordinary days and extraordinary events, showcasing in one long breath the interconnectivity of life. This is starkly reflected in McCormack’s prose: there are no chapter breaks, no full stops, just paragraphs knocking into one another like dominoes as one thought rapidly triggers another. This makes for a highly immersive reading experience; blink, and five pages have gone by. This stream-of-consciousness-style narration is at once delicate and powerful, taking the reader by the hand and leading them through the overlapping neural pathways of Marcus. We are so at one with his thoughts that we lose ourselves in them, and find ourselves wondering just how lost he may be too. Nevertheless, the novel’s powerful observances of character and sensation absolutely thrum with relatability – McCormack crafts his prose with such finesse that by the end of the novel you feel incredibly, intimately close to not only Marcus, but to the people in his life whom he describes, and the small-town life he so colourfully conjures. This is a novel where the everyday is infused with all the grandeur of the epic. Grand concepts such as faith and time are treated with the same level of care and respect as how to properly pour concrete. Far from being inaccessibly experimental, however, ‘Solar Bones’ feels above all rooted, even hyper-real. This is thanks to both the highly developed characterisation, and the use of the protagonist as a vessel through which to perceive wider social issues. We observe, on both a personal and a politico-social level, how rash decisions made by those in power have catastrophic knock-on effects on those further down the ladder (the novel takes place around the time of the recession, but these issues still ring true today); and witness through Marcus the collapse of all he once knew to be stable, whether his marriage, his job, his government, or his faith. He and his world have been put through the wringer, and we are invited to observe. A truly remarkable novel that lingers with the reader long after the final page is through. The novel benefits, in my opinion, from being read in as few sittings as possible; pore over it, and let it pour over you.

A joy to read. Quite simply, a classic. The dreamlike quality of the prose drew me back to it time-and-again. I bought two copies; the first in Hardback, and the second in Paperback so that I could dog-ear the many passages of prose that left a lasting impression. It's one of those novels I can imagine myself re-reading in years to come. As I said - a classic.

Mike McCormack's novel in one sentence is a beautiful, moving piece of writing. There is not much in the way of plot, just the shifting memories of our narrator as he goes about his mundane life in rural ireland. A novel with the ebb and flow of the tide. Life's quiet moments captured in heart breaking fashion.

Narrated in a single sentence this novel tells the story of the life of Marcus Conway, viewed through his own rambling thoughts and reminiscences. Much has been made of the single sentence, but the author makes clever use of paragraph breaks and segues from one section/thought into another quite easily and there is quite a nice flow to the text. I was worried that I would have to fill in all the full stops when I was reading it, but that wasn’t the case at all. This was chosen for my bookclub and mostly went down like a lead balloon! People found it boring, miserable, pointless and rambling. I bloody loved it! I thought it was an interesting journey through the inner thoughts of a man; his hopes and fears, the mistakes he made, his family and work life, his relationships with his children, and his love for engineering (which sounds boring but I found it fascinating!) There were some sections that I thought were difficult or uninteresting and I found myself zoning out, but there were more instances where I was completely drawn in. Sometimes when I was reading it on the tube to work I would look up to realise I had passed 5 stops without realising, and I love it when that happens - when you are so sucked in by a book that you don’t realise what’s happening around you. Instagram - @podsticles