Prophet Song – Paul Lynch

READ FOR BOOKCLUB
Chosen by Tessa

Prophet Song is set in an alternative Dublin where a tyrannical government is weaving its way into people’s lives, the rebels are rising up and society is slowly collapsing. It focuses on one family who suffer in many ways and one mother, Eilish Stack, who is trying to hold her family together and to keep on living as normally as possible after her husband disappears, her children rebel and her ageing father begins losing his mind. Complicating her decision-making process is her sister in Canada, who is urging her to leave the country.

History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet.

TESSA
●  I chose Prophet Song as our October Book Club read after picking it up at my daughter’s house and being intrigued after reading the synopsis. I launched myself into it and, apart from the lack of paragraph breaks (which took a bit of getting used to), I initially found it fairly easy going. Then I got halfway through, and I understood why my daughter had found it a challenging read. The intensity just keeps building, and I found I needed to put it down and come back to it, sometimes days later.

I don’t know when I last read a book so dark and moody. It tells of a society’s descent into war, which resonates far beyond the dystopian Ireland where the story is set. I found it unrelenting, draining, and heartbreaking. The style of writing felt intentionally suffocating at times, but that’s probably exactly what Lynch wants the reader to feel. You experience the slow tightening of control, the loss of freedom, and the growing desperation of the central character, Eilish, and her family as their world collapses around them.

I felt the children in the story were very strong characters, and I really felt for them. When Eilish was under immense strain, she didn’t always go easy on them, but she did her best under the circumstances. You could also feel the depth of her love for them and how powerless she felt throughout the novel.

I can’t say I loved Prophet Song, but I deeply appreciated Paul Lynch’s poetic writing, which pulled me into the story completely. On writing the book, Paul Lynch said “why are we in the West so short on empathy for the refugees flooding towards our borders? Prophet Song is partly an attempt at radical empathy.” I think he does that superbly well, and that the novel was well deserving of its 2023 Booker Prize win.

The end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news.

JODIE
●  Prophet Song is a powerful and unsettling novel that had me immersed in the chaos a society struggles  in the face of civil war. At first I struggled with the run-on sentences and rhythm but as the story progressed I realised this mirrored the turmoil and confusion in Eilish’s mind. The lack of pauses reflects her growing desperation and the suffocating nature of life under oppression. 

Although I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the novel it is very thought provoking and highlights the horror thousands of people around the world continue to endure. There’s a truly shocking moment that haunted me long after I finished the novel driving home the brutality of war.

BRIDGET
●  Prophet Song is not an easy or comforting read. From the very first pages, the author creates an atmosphere of growing unease, where the boundaries between order and chaos slowly collapse. Lynch does a great job of putting you inside Eilish’s mind. It’s impressive how convincingly he writes from a woman’s perspective. What struck me most was how the character’s clung to fragments of normality, trying to live normal lives when everything was falling apart. There’s something heartbreaking and real about that, the way ordinary life keeps going, no matter how bad things get.

I’ll be honest, this book was tough to get through. It’s relentless, often emotionally draining and I really felt the confusion, fear, and fatigue of living under oppression. But on reflection, I’m glad I read it. Lynch is talented in the way he writes, you feel the characters’ weariness & fear. But what really shines through is the resilience of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times. That quiet human instinct to keep living.

SALLY
● I want to describe this book, set in a dystopian, present-day version of Ireland, as chewy. By that, I mean the author writes without paragraph structure and with no quotation marks around any spoken language. It makes for dense reading, requiring a great deal of re-reading and concentrating to make sense of it. I have tried (unsuccessfully), to read James Joyce and this writing style reminded me of his. Since both authors are Irish perhaps this was a deliberate imitation on Lynch’s part. Some readers will find it very off-putting.

For our bookclub, this book comes hard on the tail of two other books about war-torn communities and although this scenario is fictitious, it could easily be translated to Palestine, Ukraine or Syria. One of the over-riding themes of this book is motherhood and Eilish’s dilemma is whether to be honest with her children and risk crushing their hopes or to lie about circumstances and risk a loss of their trust. The reader follows her journey from stubborn pragmatism to total deflation and acquiescence. It is a painful read.

To quote Eilish’s sister, “History is a silent record of people who could not leave.” Masticate your way through this book for a devastating vision of what can so easily happen. As right-wing politics rise globally, there are many who would do well to read Prophet Song and consider their options.

RACHEL
●  I first read Prophet Song in 2023 and found it a harrowing and affecting experience. Some scenes have stayed vividly with me ever since. Going into this re-read I was mentally and emotionally prepared for what was coming which allowed me to focus more on the book’s structure and presentation.

I loved the propulsive, rolling narrative that felt both oppressive and compelling. The absence of punctuation and paragraphs made me feel like a fly on the wall in this home, listening as people talked over one another in heightened and whispered voices. The characters are utterly believable, and I kept thinking this could happen to any of us at any time. The language is intelligent and observant, and adds further nuance to an already layered story. It’s an extraordinary work that I wish everyone would read, though I know not everyone could endure.

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Published 2023
Oneworld Publications
259 pages