Notes from a Coma
Mike McCormack
Available as Paperback, eBook
The critically acclaimed novel from the author of Solar Bones, winner of the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize and BGE Irish Book of the Year
After suffering a catastrophic breakdown, J.J. O’Malley volunteers for a government project exploring the possibility of using coma as a means to keep prisoners under control. Floating in a maintained coma on a prison ship off the west coast of Ireland, his coma goes viral and the nation turns to watch.
Brilliantly imagined and artfully constructed - merging science fiction with an affectionate portrait of small town Ireland - Notes from a Coma is a compassionate examination of a man cursed with guilt and genius.
“The first great 21st-century Irish novel”
irish Times
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“Adventurous and ambitious”
Colm Tóibín
“McCormack’s language is lovely, lyrical … his humor is dark, macabre; the words glimmer like a spell”
time Out
“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
“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 … Like parables in their easy transcendence of setting and time, the most audacious stories are classics”
the New York Times Book Review
Mike McCormack
Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1996) and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for Getting it in the Head and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. In 2016, Solar Bones won the Goldsmiths Prize and was BGE Irish Book of the Year, and in 2017 was longlisted for the Man Booker prize.
