Book Review: Paul Lynch's Prophet Song is a tremendous achievement

I don’t know when I last read a book that left me as shaken and disturbed as Paul Lynch’s fifth novel. It is a tremendous achievement, telling a dark story of a society’s descent into war that resonates far beyond Ireland.

It comes garlanded with praise from Lynch’s contemporaries including Donal Ryan, Colum McCann, Colm Toíbín, Sara Baume, Rob Doyle, Christine Dwyer Hickey, and Lisa Harding, all richly deserved. This is one of the most important novels of 2023.

Paul Lynch is a fearless writer — unafraid of taking on large themes and tackling them face to face. The story recounts a mother’s experience of life in suburban Dublin, as it is transformed by a tyrannical government into a war zone. While it is Irish in detail, its events recall those seen nightly on the news.

It opens simply enough, on a dark, wet evening as microbiologist and mother of four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her doorstep. Two officers from the newly-formed secret police are looking for her husband Larry, an official with the Teachers’ Union of Ireland.

From the very start, everything is seen from Eilish’s point of view, the subtle twists and turns of the richly atmospheric prose conveying her thought processes with clarity and precision: ‘Eilish finds her body moving towards the hall with the baby in her arms, she opens the front door and two men are standing before the porch glass almost faceless in the dark. She turns on the porch light and the men are known in an instant from how they are stood, the night-cold air suspiring it seems as she slides open the patio door, the suburban quiet, the rain falling almost unspoken onto St Laurence Street, upon the black car parked in front of the house. How the men seem to carry the feeling of the night…’ 

While the heightened language may seem strange at first, with the dialogue recounted in indirect speech, nouns often forced to serve as verbs and other idiosyncrasies, the reader quickly becomes accustomed to the strangeness, seeing the world through Eilish’s eyes. She is a kind, intelligent woman, highly qualified as a scientist and about to return to work after taking maternity leave with her and Larry’s “surprise” baby, Ben, following their son Bailey, now 12, Molly, 14and 17-year-old Mark. She and Larry have a good marriage, mainly focused on getting the children to school, delivering them by car to their extra-curricular activities, and picking them up again. Eilish also keeps an eye on her widowed father, Simon, living alone a short drive away, and showing signs of dementia.

Larry does not return from questioning, nor does he answer his phone. A national emergency is declared and there is talk of internment. The author does not dwell on the details of what is happening politically: the focus is entirely on Eilish’s experience of daily life in the nightmare of a society that is transforming into a police state. As things get worse she looks back nostalgically and ‘she sees how happiness hides in the humdrum…’ Her sister in Canada encourages her to bring the family to safety while she can, but Eilish cannot decide.

It is hard to put the book down as life for Eilish and the children turns from bad to worse, all too plausibly, beyond anyone’s control. Three hundred-plus pages go by in a flash, as she struggles to hold her family together in the huge catastrophe that has befallen the familiar cityscape.

Prophet Song is an extraordinary achievement, totally realistic, demonstrating the power of fiction to enhance our empathy for those elsewhere, living through horrors beyond our everyday experience., witnessed only on the TV screen.

• This article was first published on September 2. Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize for Prophet Song on November 26.