Book: The Surfacing

IT HAS been a while since Cork-born writer Cormac James had a novel to his name — his debut, Track and Field, was published (by New Island Press) 14 years ago. So it’s safe to assume that life has got in the way, work has been done, and that James — a graduate of the University of East Anglia Creative Writing course — has been biding his time, waiting for the right kind of muse to land on his shoulders.

Of course, the delay could also have been due to the rather mundane lack of sufficient funds, a state of financial affairs that was arighted in 2010 when — on the basis of the opening chapters of The Surfacing — James was awarded a €15,000 Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland.