This Plague of Souls
by Mike McCormack
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Pub Date 26 Oct 2023 | Archive Date 26 Oct 2023
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Description
How do you rebuild the world?
How do you put it back together?
From The Booker-Prize longlisted author of Solar Bones
Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland after a long time away, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no furniture, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed.
The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon’s life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent.
Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.
Advance Praise
‘This Plague of Souls is written in perfectly-pitched cadences. It captures with exquisite care 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
‘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
‘This is a darkly marvellous novel: at once intimate, domestic and poignant, then speculative, hard-boiled and wild. That McCormack can be so convincing, so skilled in both registers is remarkable. That he can do it concurrently is genius’
LISA McINERNEY
‘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
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781838859329 |
| PRICE | £16.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 208 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Ben D, Reviewer
Nealon, newly released from prison, returns to his home to find it empty. A phone call from a stranger who will not identify himself says he will explain all if Nealon agrees to meet for one conversation...
This Plague of Souls has the propulsive essence of a thriller and the literary writing one expects from McCormack, author of the superb Solar Bones. This is another very fine novel, one I devoured in a single sitting. It is tense, lean, and emotionally gripping. McCormack doesn't spell things out to the reader, he lets you experience them as Nealon does, and this immersion into a strange yet somehow familiar but not quite world is perfect. I was never sure where this novel was going to go, and whilst there will be some who find it ultimately frustrating not to be given all the answers, readers that love works which allow the reader to imagine and engage with a novel will be right at home here.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one and I say thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
Peter W, Reviewer
This book is in three parts, and although by the end it is clear what the question is, it is not clear what the answer is.
The reader can add his own views to what has happened and what is happening.
A clever short novel, easily read in one sitting.
I loved it.
My thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy for honest review.
Clarisa B, Educator
A wonderful, mysterious and intriguing tale of self-discovery and reckoning with the past, the present and the future. The protagonist-narrator is persuasively allusive, never transparent, oddly touching: a lonely, dangerous, damaged man? The novel is divided in three narrative blocks progressively disclosing context and layers of the protagonist’s story… there is a totally entrancing, beautiful writing that sustains the unreality of the atmosphere. The final section a brilliant, unexpected situation that reads as a metaphor, lifting the whole onto an even more intriguing plane. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, despite finding the title at first pretentious. It actually isn’t!! but an actual clue as to some of the aims behind a rather “thrilleresque” way of presenting this life. I had never read a book by Mike McCormack and I am going to read his previous works. Recommended - loads of food for reading delight and actual thought.
Kathryn M, Reviewer
This is a short but memorable novel. It has the philosophical edge associated with McCormack's other works but here, it is combined with a fast-paced narrative which is more mainstream. While not much happens, it is atmospheric and stayed with me long after the last page. It was not unlike Waiting for Godot.
Pacy, throughful and memorable.
Thank you NetGalley and the author for the ARC
Georgina I, Reviewer
Our protagonist Nealon returns, after a lengthy period in prison on remand, to the remote West of Ireland farmhouse where he grew up with his father (his mother died at the time of his birth) and where he later lived with his wife of three years Olwyn and young child Cuan. The house is cold and uninhabited, but barely through the door, and he receives calls from an unknown person who seems to know a lot about Nealon, saying he knows there's information they can share.
In the first chapter, Country Feedback, we get the bones of Nealon’s life, his time with his father, and his marriage, including how he abducted Olwyn from a Dublin crackhouse! All the while, these anonymous calls continue.
We move on to No Traffic and a Dry Road, where Nealon spends time reflecting on Cuan, on the deterioration in his marriage when he was in prison, and on his time in prison where National Geographic became his link to the world. All on the backdrop of an unspecified but rapidly evolving national security alert with Ireland plunging into an almost lockdown state.
In the third instalment of This Plague of Souls takes place in Dublin as Nealon and his persistent caller meet. This man tells Nealon what he has pieced together of his life, which helpfully fills some gaps in the story Nealon has so far spun while also proposing his view on Nealon’s involvement in a large scale and, in all honesty far fetched insurance fraud, which seemingly was globally philanthropically motivated.
It's hard to say more without spoilers, but suffice to say this was my first McCormack book, and it won't be my last!
This Plague of Souls is beautifully written and highly compelling. It is a truly fascinating short metaphysical thriller with a timely feel of society in 2023 with growing security threats (actual and perceived) and how both state and society react to them. Global actions have local consequences whether we always realise it or not.
My only complaint? I didn't want the story to end, and at under 200 pages, there was certainly scope for more. 4.5⭐
Thank you to the publisher for both a NetGalley ARC and for sending me a physical proof copy.
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