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Getting It in the Head: Stories
Sixteen stories deal with the harsh violence of modern life in a world where kids make bombs, sculptors dismember themselves for art, and layabouts murder their parents
243 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 18, 2019
Mike McCormack is perhaps best known for his one-sentence novel Solar Bones, which won the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize and was longlisted for the 2017 Booker prize. I was not aware of him before that book, so it came as something of a surprise to me to discover that this, his debut short story collection, was first published as long ago as 1996.
This collection is extremely impressive, containing some very striking and surprising tales, with a loose link of obsessive characters. Some are macabre, bloodthirsty and surreal, others are much more grounded in reality.
One of my favourites was the title story, which closes the collection and at 60 pages is almost a novella, telling the story in the voices of two brothers, the younger, Owl, clever and obsessed with death and destruction, and the elder an alcoholic student dropout. They watch the local pub go up in flames, and Owl and his friend hatch a plan to take some of the cola bottles in the store behind the ruined building by blowing up the door. Their rudimentary bomb succeeds rather too well .
My other favourite is The Stained Glass Variations, in which a young woman meets a retired circus performer who made a living eating things like metal and glass. She conceives a plan to steal the baby Jesus from the picture in a church window, grinding up the glass and eating it .
Another very striking story tells the life history of an artist who exhibits surgically removed parts of his own body - perhaps the conclusion of this one is inevitable - we know from the title that the artist died young!
I often find that after reading a short story collection I only have a clear memory of a couple of them. This time almost all of them left strong impressions.
This 2017 Canongate edition has a fascinating afterword by the author in which McCormack describes the circumstances in which he wrote the book and what he hoped to achieve.
This collection is extremely impressive, containing some very striking and surprising tales, with a loose link of obsessive characters. Some are macabre, bloodthirsty and surreal, others are much more grounded in reality.
One of my favourites was the title story, which closes the collection and at 60 pages is almost a novella, telling the story in the voices of two brothers, the younger, Owl, clever and obsessed with death and destruction, and the elder an alcoholic student dropout. They watch the local pub go up in flames, and Owl and his friend hatch a plan to take some of the cola bottles in the store behind the ruined building by blowing up the door. Their rudimentary bomb succeeds rather too well .
My other favourite is The Stained Glass Variations, in which a young woman meets a retired circus performer who made a living eating things like metal and glass. She conceives a plan to steal the baby Jesus from the picture in a church window, grinding up the glass and eating it .
Another very striking story tells the life history of an artist who exhibits surgically removed parts of his own body - perhaps the conclusion of this one is inevitable - we know from the title that the artist died young!
I often find that after reading a short story collection I only have a clear memory of a couple of them. This time almost all of them left strong impressions.
This 2017 Canongate edition has a fascinating afterword by the author in which McCormack describes the circumstances in which he wrote the book and what he hoped to achieve.
September 23, 2019
I didn't enjoy the two openers, but wonder now if that was simply my needing to acclimate to what are deeply troubling tales. The writing is often tremendous, the right shade of black, and for a rough idea as to what you can expect, here's a passage from 'Thomas Crumlesh 1960-1992: A Retrospective' which felt to me equal parts Ian Banks and JG Ballard:
'His deterioration could not go on indefinitely. In March 1992 he wrote telling me he planned to exhibit his final piece at the Kassel Documenta. He travelled to Dublin the following month and spent a week at my house where he outlined the procedure I was to follow after the operation. On the night of the tenth, after shaking hands with appropriate solemnity for the last time, I administered him a massive dose of morphine, a euthanasia injection. He died painlessly within four minutes. Then, following his instructions, I removed his remaining left arm and head -- messy, dispiriting work. I then boiled the flesh from the arm and skull in a huge bath and using a solution of bleach and furniture polish brought the bone to a luminous whiteness. I fixed the skull in the hand and set the whole thing on a wall mount; Alas, Poor Thomas he had told me to call it. Then I sent it to Kassel at the end of the month, Thomas already having informed the gallery as to the kind of work they were to expect. In critical terms it was his most successful piece and when Kiefer singled him out as the genius specific to the jaded tenor of this brutal and fantastic century his reputation was cemented. This last piece sold for twenty-five Deutschmarks.'
'His deterioration could not go on indefinitely. In March 1992 he wrote telling me he planned to exhibit his final piece at the Kassel Documenta. He travelled to Dublin the following month and spent a week at my house where he outlined the procedure I was to follow after the operation. On the night of the tenth, after shaking hands with appropriate solemnity for the last time, I administered him a massive dose of morphine, a euthanasia injection. He died painlessly within four minutes. Then, following his instructions, I removed his remaining left arm and head -- messy, dispiriting work. I then boiled the flesh from the arm and skull in a huge bath and using a solution of bleach and furniture polish brought the bone to a luminous whiteness. I fixed the skull in the hand and set the whole thing on a wall mount; Alas, Poor Thomas he had told me to call it. Then I sent it to Kassel at the end of the month, Thomas already having informed the gallery as to the kind of work they were to expect. In critical terms it was his most successful piece and when Kiefer singled him out as the genius specific to the jaded tenor of this brutal and fantastic century his reputation was cemented. This last piece sold for twenty-five Deutschmarks.'
April 8, 2015
Mike McCormack is a writer from the west of Ireland, and Getting it in the Head is his debut collection of short stories - first published in 1996. It's been out of print for years, which probably explains why it has only two other reviews on Goodreads - but it's recently been re-released by the Irish Lilliput Press, and if you're interested you can buy it here.
The collection itself enjoyed critical success, won the Rooney Prize and was named as one of the books of the year by the New York Times. It's not a bad collection - but it's often less than satisfying, and shows the signs of being a first work by a debuting writer. Many of the stories included are delightfully absurd, outlandish and experimental - with weird events happening with little introduction or explanation, as if we were walking through an other, deranged world, but still recognizable as parallel to our own. In the first story, a man opens his door to a female travelling salesman and learns that he might have bit more than he could chew; in another, a young boy is possessed by the spirit of his late grandfather, much to dismay and confusion of his parents - should they be happy that their father is back, or mourn the new loss of their son? A story titled The Occupation: A Guide for Tourists is a choose your own adventure road to Calvary, which leads to the same outcome albeit through three very different patch, each giving it a new interpretation.
This isn't a bad collection, but largely a forgotten one - perhaps undeservedly so, but that's publishing for you: here today, gone tomorrow. Luckily for us, with the advent of digital books this is no longer a big problem - but now we're flooded with too much content from all sides, which in consideration might be an even bigger one.
Interview with Mike McCormack in The Spectactor
Interview with Mike McCormack in The Irish Writers' Centre (includes a short film adaptation of a short story from this collection, The Terms)
The collection itself enjoyed critical success, won the Rooney Prize and was named as one of the books of the year by the New York Times. It's not a bad collection - but it's often less than satisfying, and shows the signs of being a first work by a debuting writer. Many of the stories included are delightfully absurd, outlandish and experimental - with weird events happening with little introduction or explanation, as if we were walking through an other, deranged world, but still recognizable as parallel to our own. In the first story, a man opens his door to a female travelling salesman and learns that he might have bit more than he could chew; in another, a young boy is possessed by the spirit of his late grandfather, much to dismay and confusion of his parents - should they be happy that their father is back, or mourn the new loss of their son? A story titled The Occupation: A Guide for Tourists is a choose your own adventure road to Calvary, which leads to the same outcome albeit through three very different patch, each giving it a new interpretation.
This isn't a bad collection, but largely a forgotten one - perhaps undeservedly so, but that's publishing for you: here today, gone tomorrow. Luckily for us, with the advent of digital books this is no longer a big problem - but now we're flooded with too much content from all sides, which in consideration might be an even bigger one.
Interview with Mike McCormack in The Spectactor
Interview with Mike McCormack in The Irish Writers' Centre (includes a short film adaptation of a short story from this collection, The Terms)
August 9, 2008
Whoa, it's Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected on steroid!
I read these stories a couple of years back from a book I loaned from someone I couldn't remember, and at some point couldn't even get the title of this book out of my head, but I always remember the stories it contains. Yes, they are macabre, but that's not (the only reason) why they are so haunting. It's the originality of turning something so believeably banal like travelling salesman and young boys playing board games into outrageous outcomes (not magical-realistic outrageous, not badly-researched-sci-fi outrageous, but violently imaginative outrageous).
I need to get a copy for myself now that I remember what the book's really called.
I read these stories a couple of years back from a book I loaned from someone I couldn't remember, and at some point couldn't even get the title of this book out of my head, but I always remember the stories it contains. Yes, they are macabre, but that's not (the only reason) why they are so haunting. It's the originality of turning something so believeably banal like travelling salesman and young boys playing board games into outrageous outcomes (not magical-realistic outrageous, not badly-researched-sci-fi outrageous, but violently imaginative outrageous).
I need to get a copy for myself now that I remember what the book's really called.
May 11, 2008
Wow, here's a guy taking risks. I can imagine most of these stories getting shredded in workshops. So this is a great reminder about not being afraid to write an unconventional story. What makes them work--aside from McCormack's imagination--is the energetic writing: the great use of nouns and verbs to describe; the mix of short sentences that appear to be fragments but aren't, just unexpected syntactically, with sprawling, dense, multiple punctuated sentences. Macabre, neo-gothic, wildly inventive, and certainly not your run-of the-mill, workshopped-to- death-in-an-MFA-program, collection of stories. Good collection of black humor.
June 3, 2020
3.5 stars -arresting stories with great images and narratives, but it definitely read like the first attempt at stories it is. Overkill, melodrama (particularly in the long title story) at the expense of character I felt. However a good spiky read, you can see talent emerging, and 'Solar Bones' shows a great writer in full flow and control. These are the try outs, the experiments that led him there.
January 17, 2026
When this collection was published in 1997 The Irish Times said:
'Although continually demonstrating throughout the 16 stories gathered here that his bizarre vision, never mind impressive talent, relies for effect almost entirely on extremes, McCormack resists pushing his wacky narratives beyond their limits. He is a confident, clever, risky yet controlled writer; his comedy is black, often brutal, and his particular interest is domestic violence of the psychological variety. McCormack has read widely and there are echoes of his masters. Father-son tensions surface in several of the stories, but he is far more interested in the mind than he is in emotions. Getting it in the Head is a pretty apt title, but at their more grotesque moments these tales ensure the reader also gets it in the stomach.'
and the Kirkus Review in the USA:
A creepier, more macabre side of Ireland is revealed in the 16 stories here, an arresting, prizewinning debut collection from McCormack in which axes, knives, and transgressive acts figure prominently. The lead story, “The Gospel of Knives,” sets the tone for what follows, as a female hawker of knives persuades a young man, none too gently, that she has goods he can’t do without. One of the few other female characters appears in “The Stained Glass Violations,— in which a librarian sitting on a park bench during her lunch break meets a retired circus freak, a glass-eater, and soon finds herself drawn into an act of glass-eating that sparks what may be a miracle. A transformation of a grimmer kind (in —The Angel of Ruin—) is worked on a sallow Irish youth in the US who’s been hired to help demolish a dangerously contaminated industrial site. Other forms of unsavory change involve a sculptor who makes the ultimate sacrifice for his art (“Thomas Crumlesh 1960—1992: A Retrospective—), chopping himself up over the years with the help of a whacked-out surgeon, who finally cuts off the artist’s head and bleaches it according to his instructions for the Documenta, an avant garde art show in Germany. The title story features a pair of brothers, the younger brilliant and deeply twisted (he laughs while reading about the plague and other human disasters), the older a dark-haired drunk with a temper. They loathe each other, but when the brainy one sets off a homemade explosive that kills his best friend, the drunk’s instinct is to protect him—until goaded to the point where a baser instinct takes over. Comparisons to Poe are apt, and while shocks here on occasion seem only stunts, there’s no denying McCormack’s knack for throwing a harsh light on some of life’s grimmer corners. Disturbing, audacious work.'
I quote the above because I thought the stories brilliant - but I love short stories and though I agree with much that has been said about this collection I am astounded that none of the reviewers could not recognise in stories like 'A is for Axe' the very deep roots in Irish literature of McCormack's inspiration had they never, for example, read or watched 'Playboy of the Western World' by J.M. Synge?
Finally I would like to remind readers that this collection won a Rooney prize in 1998 - and the Rooney prize is one of the few awards I have unlimited respect for.
'Although continually demonstrating throughout the 16 stories gathered here that his bizarre vision, never mind impressive talent, relies for effect almost entirely on extremes, McCormack resists pushing his wacky narratives beyond their limits. He is a confident, clever, risky yet controlled writer; his comedy is black, often brutal, and his particular interest is domestic violence of the psychological variety. McCormack has read widely and there are echoes of his masters. Father-son tensions surface in several of the stories, but he is far more interested in the mind than he is in emotions. Getting it in the Head is a pretty apt title, but at their more grotesque moments these tales ensure the reader also gets it in the stomach.'
and the Kirkus Review in the USA:
A creepier, more macabre side of Ireland is revealed in the 16 stories here, an arresting, prizewinning debut collection from McCormack in which axes, knives, and transgressive acts figure prominently. The lead story, “The Gospel of Knives,” sets the tone for what follows, as a female hawker of knives persuades a young man, none too gently, that she has goods he can’t do without. One of the few other female characters appears in “The Stained Glass Violations,— in which a librarian sitting on a park bench during her lunch break meets a retired circus freak, a glass-eater, and soon finds herself drawn into an act of glass-eating that sparks what may be a miracle. A transformation of a grimmer kind (in —The Angel of Ruin—) is worked on a sallow Irish youth in the US who’s been hired to help demolish a dangerously contaminated industrial site. Other forms of unsavory change involve a sculptor who makes the ultimate sacrifice for his art (“Thomas Crumlesh 1960—1992: A Retrospective—), chopping himself up over the years with the help of a whacked-out surgeon, who finally cuts off the artist’s head and bleaches it according to his instructions for the Documenta, an avant garde art show in Germany. The title story features a pair of brothers, the younger brilliant and deeply twisted (he laughs while reading about the plague and other human disasters), the older a dark-haired drunk with a temper. They loathe each other, but when the brainy one sets off a homemade explosive that kills his best friend, the drunk’s instinct is to protect him—until goaded to the point where a baser instinct takes over. Comparisons to Poe are apt, and while shocks here on occasion seem only stunts, there’s no denying McCormack’s knack for throwing a harsh light on some of life’s grimmer corners. Disturbing, audacious work.'
I quote the above because I thought the stories brilliant - but I love short stories and though I agree with much that has been said about this collection I am astounded that none of the reviewers could not recognise in stories like 'A is for Axe' the very deep roots in Irish literature of McCormack's inspiration had they never, for example, read or watched 'Playboy of the Western World' by J.M. Synge?
Finally I would like to remind readers that this collection won a Rooney prize in 1998 - and the Rooney prize is one of the few awards I have unlimited respect for.
August 11, 2024
3.5 I'd say. Some very strange short stories included in here but I guess at all adds to the recurring theme. A lot of amazing phrases you'd really get a laugh out of if you were Irish and grew up somewhat in the countryside. Overall an interesting but slightly disturbing collection of stories.
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August 26, 2025your ecstasy has lifted you beyond sensation
September 2, 2017
This is superb. The stories are intense, unexpected, and feel so whole and complete even at just 12 pages. McCormack throws you in the deep end in every story, from the very start of the collection -- the opener, The Gospel of Knives, is one of the strangest and most subversive stories I've read. There's a thread of religious metaphor throughout the book, but one that resonates with me and reflects the way I find myself drawn to religion -- not so much a moralising, but in the recognition that religion can be obsessive and mad and it's power sometimes inexplicable. Fuck. Even his afterword is masterful. I've never seen someone write a story out of his acknowledgements.
I started this book a long while back, but I have this certainty that these stories are going to stay with me. Getting it in the Head is such an apt title. This collection very much has the feel of The Great Automatic Grammatizator And Other Stories or that ferris wheel scene in Sputnik Sweetheart , two works I read while young that I've never quite shaken again. I'm not sure how I'm quite going to get over this book, and I have this strange urge to recommend it in the strongest terms to everyone I know who reads.
I started this book a long while back, but I have this certainty that these stories are going to stay with me. Getting it in the Head is such an apt title. This collection very much has the feel of The Great Automatic Grammatizator And Other Stories or that ferris wheel scene in Sputnik Sweetheart , two works I read while young that I've never quite shaken again. I'm not sure how I'm quite going to get over this book, and I have this strange urge to recommend it in the strongest terms to everyone I know who reads.
March 13, 2024
I was pleasantly surprised after diving into McCormac's strange yet reflective universe, built with a simple yet effective and flowing prose. I'm looking forward to reading more of his works.
- Favorites: "The Gospel of Knives", "The Stained Glass Violations", "Thomas Crumlesh 1960-1992: A Retrospective", "Machine, Part II" and "The Reach of Love".
- Almost great: "Old Man, My Son", "The Angel of Ruin" and "The Occupation: A Guide for Tourists".
- Nothing to write home about: "A Is for Axe", "Blues for Emmett Ward" and "Getting it in the Head".
- Interesting premise that went nowhere (what a pity!): "Oestrogen", "Materials Grant", "Amor Vincit Omnia" and "The Terms" and "Dead Man's Fuel".
- Favorites: "The Gospel of Knives", "The Stained Glass Violations", "Thomas Crumlesh 1960-1992: A Retrospective", "Machine, Part II" and "The Reach of Love".
- Almost great: "Old Man, My Son", "The Angel of Ruin" and "The Occupation: A Guide for Tourists".
- Nothing to write home about: "A Is for Axe", "Blues for Emmett Ward" and "Getting it in the Head".
- Interesting premise that went nowhere (what a pity!): "Oestrogen", "Materials Grant", "Amor Vincit Omnia" and "The Terms" and "Dead Man's Fuel".
March 25, 2023
An eclectic mix of short stories, culminating in the strange title story which will leave readers contemplating the divergent points of view and trying to work what the true tragedy in the town of Louisburg actually is.
McCormack's ethereal style and his ear for language makes his writing accessible and enjoyable to submerge yourself in.
McCormack's ethereal style and his ear for language makes his writing accessible and enjoyable to submerge yourself in.
March 25, 2021
Ah ladsssss
Pretty disappointed honestly. Similar to Chuck Palahniuk, I think his story concepts are interesting but his writing style is what I struggle to connect with.
Pretty disappointed honestly. Similar to Chuck Palahniuk, I think his story concepts are interesting but his writing style is what I struggle to connect with.
November 16, 2022
Normal. Algunas stories me encantaron y otras de pedo las termine.
pd: lo termine hace tres semanas y me olvide de actualizar
pd: lo termine hace tres semanas y me olvide de actualizar
February 8, 2023
Nothing but praise!!!
September 19, 2023
Completely obsessed with a few of these stories, don’t really care for many others, but The Stained Glass Violations has raised the average to 4 stars for me here. That one did something to me.
December 14, 2025
Some good stories, some bad, some alright also some cool/unique concepts of short stories
September 30, 2016
Excellent, visceral collection of short stories. Not all zingers, but all of them with a hefty punch in the plot, and plenty of them will resonate and rest in my mind long after reading. Thematically focussed on Irish life, with often surreal or fantastical events that invade mundane circumstances.
May 23, 2016
I wanna read this because I've heard that Elliott Smith enjoyed this book a lot.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews