Mike McCormack: ‘If I’ve one gift as a writer, it’s patience’

The award-winning Irish author on losing his father at 18, the drawbacks of English editors and the theme of imprisonment in his workMike McCormack was born in London in 1965 and raised on a farm in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. He published his first story collection, Getting It in the Head, in 1996, followed by three novels that have marked him out as an experimentalist. Notes from a Coma (2005) interspersed its narrative with a fragmentary commentary at the bottom of each page. His work reached a wider audience with 2016’s Solar Bones, in which a lonely Mayo engineer recalls his life in one unending sentence – it won the Goldsmiths prize and was longlisted for the Booker. His latest novel, This Plague of Souls, follows a painter named Nealon as he returns home from prison and sets out to find his wife and child amid brewing global unrest. McCormack lives in Galway with his wife, artist Maeve Curtis, and their son.What sparked the new book?I started writing it in 2012, around the same time as Solar Bones, which then asserted priority. It seems that I was very interested in how worlds collapse, but coming into Covid, the focus changed from how the world collapses to how do we put it back together. Both books are about men trying to build a world – one as an engineer, the other as an artist – and both books seem to think that world building has to do with the making of family. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-11-11 18:00:01 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "Mike McCormack: ‘If I’ve one gift as a writer, it’s patience’"


Sainsbury's signs exclusive deal to sell Joan Collins book

Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Mon, 15/08/2011 - 15:45 Sainsbury’s has signed an exclusive deal with independent publisher Constable & Robinson to sell Joan Collins’ new book. Publishing director at C&R Andreas Campomar said the company hoped to reach a wider audience for... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Crossan writes three YA titles for Bloomsbury

Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 30/06/2011 - 15:01 Bloomsbury has acquired three YA books by Irish author, Sarah Crossan. Senior commissioning editor Ele Fountain acquired the trio of titles through Julia Churchill at Greenhouse, with the first title, Breathe, to be... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Child and Collins join Kindle Million Club

Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Mon, 06/06/2011 - 14:49 Lee Child and Suzanne Collins are the latest authors to sell more than a million Kindle books. The pair join Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Charlaine Harris. Child, who has written 16 Jack Reacher thrillers... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this