Anna-Marie White

This is a novel of juxtapositions and contrasts. Life in an lrish village community is set beside a 3 monthly sci-fi-like penal experiment. How to write notes from a coma, where there is no conscious experience? McCormack intersperses his narrative with footnotes connected with the ongoing comas. Sometimes hard to decipher, but always engaging,the notes range from metaphysics to the world of medicine. McCormack presents the notes in various styles, self-parodying in a Joycean manner. Gently, he touches big themes, including - adoption, family, community, celebrity, death, love, politics, the penal system, consciousness itself. Mike McCormack is a writer to watch.