Rating: 4.5/5
I try make it a rule not to talk about politics in my work. With all that’s happening lately, I tend to need a break from reality. Though thanks to social media, reality is hard to avoid these days. The same can be said in the art of literature. If a theme is focused on current world topics, it has to be done in a way that won’t come off as an author’s one-sided manifesto that gets me dropping it off at the nearest charity shop.
Fortunately Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song (2023) is not one of those books.
In fact, the voice in Prophet Song, is one that cries out for readers to hear, portraying a terrifyingly suppressive story, too eerily familiar to ignore.
Prophet Song follows Eilish and her family, who are living in an Ireland slowly turning totalitarian. While at first the family opt to stay low, things become problematic when her husband Larry is arrested for crimes against his country and subsequently vanishes. What follows is a mother’s struggle to keep her remaining family together and try to re-establish some sense of order in a world going mad.
After reading my synopsis, some readers may already be put off by the idea of reading this dystopian novel. As I’ve mentioned we live in depressing time so why be reminded off it? However, Prophet Song is worth readers’ attention due to Lynch’s ability to create such a vivid picture.
When reading Prophet Song readers will find it heavily descriptive, hauntingly rendering a depressive and terrifying world, where neighbour turns against neighbour and war takes place just outside your front porch. Asides from Ireland’s own history, Lynch clearly takes inspiration from the on-going issues within the world e.g. the channel crossings, the Syrian Civil War, bringing to light humanity’s dark nature. And it is carried by a narrator with whom readers can both sympathise and detest. While readers hope Eilish will get her family through this safely they may also wish to knock some sense into her due to her delusion that a better tomorrow will come around the corner. While admirable, it is equally frustrating, because most of us will know you have to make things happen and happy ever after is pretty much non-existent, at least in the real world. One negative aspect with regards to Eilish’s story is it can be difficult to focus on the structure. Lynch adopts Cormac McCarthy’s ‘no quotations’ rule so the dialogue melds in with the descriptions. While I could interpret this method as Lynch’s way to demonstrate the confined space the people in this story are experiencing, it made it difficult to maintain focus on one spot for long. Or for that matter find your place again. However, despite this, it clearly did not deter me from my goal, leading to an open-ended finale that will get readers praying for a miracle.
In conclusion, Prophet Song is a beautifully dark novel carried by an all too human narrator, whose message all should take heed of.
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