PROPHET SONG, by Paul Lynch
Oneworld Publications, $36.99
This is my last review for 2023 and I really wanted to tell you about one of the most beautiful books of 2023, The Untamed Thread, by Kiwi fibre artist Fleur Woods. This book is uplifting and inspiring and if you love fibre art – look it up, it’s glorious! However, I feel compelled to tell you about a very different book, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Not because it is the Booker Prize winner for 2023, but because it has been haunting me all week. It is the story of Eilish, a Dublin mother of four children. The premise of the book is that Ireland has elected a neo-Fascist nationalist government and union leaders and other enemies of the regime start disappearing. Boys, including Eilish’s oldest son, are conscripted to serve in the government’s army from the age of seventeen. Everything the author describes has happened and is happening somewhere in the world and this is what makes Eilish’s story so gripping. Her husband, a union leader, is one of the first people to disappear. Should she stay quietly under the radar to protect her children?
The book is written in an unusual style. There are no paragraphs, and the dialogues lack speech marks. This all adds to the urgency and tension of the story. The author also stays vague on the ideology of the totalitarian government. They are not white supremacists or religious zealots, but they want to control the Irish people and will not allow any dissent. This gives the book a universal quality. It has elements of the holocaust, disappearances associated with authoritarian regimes and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
The Prophet Song is dark, menacing, and emotionally draining and if you have a good excuse not to read it, then just don’t read it. But I could not allow myself to look away. The violence and persecution that is experienced by Eilish’s fictional character is experienced by real people all over the world. Paul Lynch’s brilliant and gripping book allowed me to walk in their shoes for a short time and create a better understanding of their suffering.
Wilma
