PROPHET SONG by Paul Lynch — reviewed by Stella

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Prophet Song is furious in tempo and content. It has knocked me sideways and taken all the other contenders off my best book of the year (and it’s been a year of very good fiction) list by strides. From the knock on the door to the final moment, this novel is breathless, heart-wrenching and brutal. So human, so foreign, yet so real. Eilish is a mother, a wife, a daughter, someone’s sister. She is a microbiologist/desk bound researcher, harrying her children into the car to get to school on time, coaxing her husband, school teacher/union delegate for an answer to a question when he is miles away in his own thoughts, and wondering what her teenage son sees in that girl. She could be your neighbour. Set in an alternative Ireland, nationalism is on the rise. Larry is warned to call off the strike. People are wearing party pins on their lapels. The police are knocking on the door. And then…Larry is arrested. Lawyers can’t make contact with their clients. People are leaving the country. Flags are flying from homes in the street and if you don’t have one, you're against them. You’re a traitor. And then…the rebellion begins and you are at war. Your father’s mind is slipping, your eldest son needs to leave the country, your husband has disappeared, your daughter won’t eat and your baby is teething, while your 12 year-old has become an enigma. And then… food is scarce, bombs are falling, sometimes the electricity comes back on and you bake bread and do the washing on the fast cycle. Prophet Song is an urgent critique on brutality and power; and what it takes to remain in the world even when you are disorientated and disconnected from everything you know and that which holds you safe. The language is bundled together, the sentences almost stepping on each other, as claustrophobic as the situation Eilish finds herself in. This is a brilliant novel that needs to be read for its beauty of language and structure, as well as its haunting content.