Cacophony Of Bone

Book two

I am over the moon to share this utterly beautiful cover for Cacophony Of Bone , my second book, coming out with Canongate in May. Illustration by Vasilisa Romanenko and design by Rafaela Romaya.

It’s a huge thing to bring a book into the world at anytime but these last few years have been wild & I’m so grateful to all the good people who nurtured this wee book & gave it safe harbour; in particular my agent Kirsty Mclachlan and editor Simon Thorogood. I am also deeply grateful to The Arts Council for awarding me a Literary Bursary to help me during the writing of the book. What an incredible thing it is to be supported in such ways as these.

This book was written during the only winter I spent living in Cornwall, in the rare and stolen hours I managed to write, alongside mothering. It was written at the height of a period of Postnatal Depression—about the first year of a Global Pandemic—and I am extremely proud of not only getting through both of those time periods but of creating something from them; a something where once there had been nothing.

This book is about lots of things — time; solitude; love; creativity etc but it is, at its core— a book about home. About what it means to build a nest; about how we find our place and what it means to live in a world that is so broken, so beautiful, so beyond all definition.

Writing this book has been one of the most important, defining experiences of my life and I am so excited to watch this book become a real object; one that might hold a person close, when they might need it most.

Preorders make a huge difference to how a book makes its way into the world; the people it gets to reach, and I am so thankful for all the preorders, likes, shares and so on. It means the world to me. Below are just a few of the early responses from readers who have so beautifully given their time to this book. I am so grateful.

‘Teeming with abundance even when it is filled with grief, and wholly open to the world around it…Unlike anyone else writing just now.’

Niamh Campbell

'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.' 

Kevin Barry

‘I am a little in awe of Kerri ní Dochartaigh's work – the clarity and disinhibition of her storytelling; the wild freedom of her prose. Here is a brave and bold book, and one that deserves to be read, then read again.'

Helen Jukes

‘Kerri ní Dochartaigh is something of a modern-day mystic, a writer of acute sensitivity and wonder. There is such beauty, such pain, such rawness in this diary of an extraordinary year - you read it feeling quickened, awakened - that you, too, are missing a layer of skin. It’s a very special book indeed.’

Lucy Caldwell

‘This is transformative writing, true and haunting, but most of all, hopeful. It sings with light and life.’

Victoria Kennefick

It feels only right that the cover of this book should be revealed in the final days of me living here, in this wee stone railway cottage, at the end of an isolated laneway, right in the heart of Ireland. The place I edited my first book; the place that first book ends; the place this second book is based entirely; perhaps the most important place of my entire life so far. And so I need to express deepest gratitude to this wee place, the one that held me close when I needed it; that taught me how to be the only thing that I will ever be.

As always I am so grateful for every single one of you for reading.

You can Buy Me A Coffee if you’d like to make a one off contribution.

My next post will be an early extract from Cacophony Of Bone and will be the first subscriber only post. If you would like to read but are unable to migrate to a paid subscription please message me. I don’t want anyone to be excluded, and am trying to find a balance between this space as a necessary income as a creative mother and a welcome space to all. With gratitude, always x