“Something solid has begun to come loose, it is her heart sliding like gravel.”
In what has been a rather lackluster Booker longlist, I find myself a bit surprised at Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song (Atlantic Monthly Press 2023). It’s a novel that tastes like something you’ve read before, only a little more pretentious, and one of a few I just wanted to stop reading several pages in. And this, dear friends, is why I don’t DNF a book; as pretentious as I think the writing is, the novel doesn’t ultimately suffer from it and the story is one that thrives in that grey area of what we believe could never happen and the fact we know too sure that it can, has and will – different faces, different places – because what happens in Lynch’s dystopian Dublin is happening and has been happening all over the world. In short, while Western Lane will always be the winner in my heart, I get the hype here.
The novel opens with Irelands newly formed secret police showing up at Eilish’s door to question her husband. He is ultimately taken, and the reader watches Ireland fall apart through the disbelieving eyes of a scientist, wife, daughter, and mother.
When Eilish’s husband is taken, she believes it is only temporary because she never believes that her Ireland will fall to a tyrannical rule that would deny her husband the right to an attorney. Even after she learns they are killing children, her disbelief trails the novel like a deserted puppy.
While the fall into tyrannical rule tastes familiar, the focus on Eilish and a more domestic approach is what elevates the novel. From dealing with a father slipping further into the shadowy arms of dementia to just trying to ensure her children have lamb and normalcy for Easter, to not wanting to leave the country until she has her husband at her side, Eilish is every daughter, mother, wife, woman.
Read this book.
Booker Count: 11 of 13
A Girl Named Tommi 