March
12
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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
In his 2023 Booker Prize winning book, Paul Lynch imagines the Republic of Ireland slipping into totalitarianism. Things kick off with a sinister knock on the door and it’s a slow but steady descent from there.
The door belongs to Eilish; a scientist, wife, mother of four and primary carer of her elderly father, who lives on the other side of the city. Up until the knock at the door, Eilish was living a busy and normal life in the suburbs of Dublin and she was in as much denial as me (the reader) about what where things might end up.
With no punctuation, no paragraphs and no quotation marks, things build (or should I say collapse?) in a powerful, perpetually discomforting, way. In terms of language, I could turn to any page at random and give you examples of how Lynch has stretched the rules to deliver a mesmerising study of societal collapse. Adjectives become verbs and verbs become adjectives with intricate descriptions where you don’t expect them and broad strokes where you would.
Like a metaphor for the growing chaos, Eilish’s father is in the early stages of dementia – cunningly aware one day and then hopelessly lost the next.
As farcical as it might seem, we all know that Eilish’s story is playing out in many parts of the world right now. We see the news and think we understand the reality of what is actually happening, but reading this book will rattle your bones as if you were in the thick of it.
Prophet Song is far from light reading, but possibly the finest example of any book of its kind that I have ever read. Utterly flawless.
And that’s my 2 cents worth.
Readhead 