Cacophony of Bone: The Circle of a Year

Cacophony of Bone: The Circle of a Year 

Hardcover – November 14, 2023

by Kerri ní Dochartaigh (Author)

---Brand New--

A December 2023 Indie Next Pick, selected by booksellers

A Kirkus Reviews “Most Anticipated Book of the Fall 2023”

From the acclaimed author of Thin Places, a luminous day book about an unexpected year and finding home.

Two days after the winter solstice in 2019, Kerri and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways 2020 was unlike any year we had seen before. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby, longed for but utterly, beautifully unexpected.

Intensely lyrical, fragmentary in subject and form, Cacophony of Bone is an ode to a year, a place, and a love that transformed a life. When the pandemic came, time seemed to shapeshift; in Kerri’s elegant prose, we can trace its quickening, its slowing. She maps the circle of a year—a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life—from one winter to the next, telling of a changed life in a changed world, as well as all that stays the same. All that keeps on living and breathing, nesting and dying. This is a book for the reader who wants to slow down, guided by a voice that is utterly singular, “rich and strange,” (Robert Macfarlane). A book about home—the deepening of family, the connections that sustain us.

About the Author

Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s first book, Thin Places, was published in Spring 2022 in the US. It was an Indies Introduce selection for Winter/Spring 2022, an Indie Next selection for April 2022, and A Junior Library Guild selection for Spring 2022. Cacophony of Bone is her second book. She lives in the west of Ireland with her family.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Milkweed Editions (November 14, 2023)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 312 pages

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9781571311573

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1 x 8.75 inches