C acophony of Bone is a book that touched me deeply. It's so vital, so brimming with life and love, and ni Dochartaigh's singular, addictive lyricism' LUCY JONES This is a brilliant second book from a unique and deeply gifted writer who constantly renews our sense of the natural world and the landscape of the heart .' From the acclaimed author of Thin Places, a luminous day book about an unexpected year and findinghome.

Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year of many changes. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex 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. This is transformative writing, true and haunting, but most of all, hopeful. It sings with light and life.’ Dreams arrive and motifs return, the days are spent reaching for meaning, walking them through, collecting and abandoning them anew.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh Press Reviews

What might it mean to focus on the sowing of seeds of hope in the face of such individual and collective despair? Cacophony of Bone is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world – but it is, too, about all that which does not change. All that which simply keeps on – living and breathing, nesting and dying – in spite of it all. Fragmentary in subject and form, fluid of language; this is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life. Told month by month, in three parts, through diary extracts, poetry, essay and hybrid prose, its form reflects the time, and the place, that helped to mould it." For Kerri there was to be one more change, a longed-for but unhoped for change. Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year – a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life – from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world – and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on – living and breathing, nesting and dying – in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean.

Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year – a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life – from one winter, to the next," the synopsis explains. "This is a time like no other, but it is also exactly like any other, too. The longest day came, as always it does – and the shortest came, too – in turn. This book is about time, that oddly boned creature; how it shapeshifts, right before our eyes. The pandemic has altered the way many of us view or experience time, and yet we watch as the natural world continues its unfurling, just as it always has, right outside our doors. It is also a book about home, and what that can mean. Home can be a place, a person, or perhaps even nature. Ritual finds form through the assumption that it is a means of really knowing something. Religious ceremony and personal rites of passage fill my thoughts. The gently, insistent act of repeating. How it creates equilibrium between the small and the vast, the seen and the unseen, the self and other, the part and the whole. We build myths (which are really just houses). Dwelling places built of the bones left behind by stories. We fill the gaps in the walls with ritual. We insulate it with objects. To notice those things and to hold them, give my furry body over to their coming, to stop hurrying through life like a person shamed, by my female body and its traumas, by my past, by what that body could not have, what its parts could not produce.In Cacophony of Bone as in her previous work, Kerri has a deeply personal voice that feels as if it comes not from her, but from the earth beneath her' MARC HAMER