free read è eBook or Kindle ePUB ´ Mike McCormack
In stories like A Is for Axe in the eBook #10003 Dead Man's Fuel The Stained Glass Violations Amor Vincit Omnia and the dazzling title piece McCormack shows a mesmerizing range and dark hued neo Gothic vision Set in v. Mike McCormack is perhaps best known for his one sentence novel Solar Bones which won the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize and was longlisted for the 2017 Booker prize I was not aware of him before that book so it came as something of a surprise to me to discover that this his debut short story collection was first published as long ago as 1996This collection is extremely impressive containing some very striking and surprising tales with a loose link of obsessive characters Some are macabre bloodthirsty and surreal others are much grounded in reality One of my favourites was the title story which closes the collection and at 60 pages is almost a novella telling the story in the voices of two brothers the younger Owl clever and obsessed with death and destruction and the elder an alcoholic student dropout They watch the local pub go up in flames and Owl and his friend hatch a plan to take some of the cola bottles in the store behind the ruined building by blowing up the door Their rudimentary bomb succeeds rather too well view spoiler killing Owl's best friend James and building to a dramatic conclusion in which the elder brother frustrated after losing a war game to his brother kills him with a kitchen knife hide spoiler
Mike McCormack ´ 3 free read
Getting It in the Head StoriesArious locations from New York Getting It ePUB #187 to the west coast of Ireland to the nameless realms of the imagination his stories conjure a world where beautiful but deranged kids make lethal bombs where talented. I didn't enjoy the two openers but wonder now if that was simply my needing to acclimate to what are deeply troubling tales The writing is often tremendous the right shade of black and for a rough idea as to what you can expect here's a passage from 'Thomas Crumlesh 1960 1992 A Retrospective' which felt to me eual parts Ian Banks and JG Ballard'His deterioration could not go on indefinitely In March 1992 he wrote telling me he planned to exhibit his final piece at the Kassel Documenta He travelled to Dublin the following month and spent a week at my house where he outlined the procedure I was to follow after the operation On the night of the tenth after shaking hands with appropriate solemnity for the last time I administered him a massive dose of morphine a euthanasia injection He died painlessly within four minutes Then following his instructions I removed his remaining left arm and head messy dispiriting work I then boiled the flesh from the arm and skull in a huge bath and using a solution of bleach and furniture polish brought the bone to a luminous whiteness I fixed the skull in the hand and set the whole thing on a wall mount; Alas Poor Thomas he had told me to call it Then I sent it to Kassel at the end of the month Thomas already having informed the gallery as to the kind of work they were to expect In critical terms it was his most successful piece and when Kiefer singled him out as the genius specific to the jaded tenor of this brutal and fantastic century his reputation was cemented This last piece sold for twenty five Deutschmarks'