Bibliogr. s. 98-99. Na s. red.: This book has been published with funding support from the Jagiellonian University under the Excellence Initiative - Research University programme

The chapter considers the theme of house and home in Mike McCormack’s novel of 2016, "Solar Bones". It revolves around Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer from west Mayo, recently deceased, who returns on All Souls’ Day to his home kitchen to reminisce about his past life’s events. Waiting for his wife to return, within one hour strung between Angelus Bell and one o’clock news, the protagonist treats us to a cascade of memories spanning from boyhood to his ascension to man, husband and father. Many layers of intimacy and various meanings of domesticity are uncovered through Marcus’s narrative, as he obsessively concentrates on the material aspects of the world - personal spaces we occupy, our environment, infrastructure, "circum-terrestrial grid of services"on which we all depend, and which have a bearing on our physical well-being. His perception is both local and global; he resembles Stephen Dedalus progressively locating himself in the universe. Likewise, the language and structure of "Solar Bones" hark back to the models provided by Joyce and Beckett, and in this sense McCormack’s redeployment of modernist aesthetics may be seen as a literary homecoming.