Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
In the not-too-distant future, the right-wing National Alliance Party has taken hold. Civil liberties are being eroded, with law and order breaking down. Conflict breaks out, with refugees fleeing. The country is Ireland, and having just won the 2023 Booker Prize, how realistic does the ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch seem ?
Family
Elish Stack is a mother of four who works as a microbiologist and suddenly finds the sinister Garda National Service Bureau at her door one evening. Her husband, a teacher and trade union leader, is soon taken in for questioning.
Eilish will do everything to keep her family together as society begins to fall apart. She's also concerned about her father Simon, who is suffering from early-onset dementia. His moments of lucidity bring home the incredulity that this is actually happening. It's not just as simple as packing essentials into a suitcase and running to the airport, and it brought home to me how difficult it is for people to flee.
Eilish also has to try to look after her children - the oldest is Mark a teenager who is finding himself being pulled towards opposing the regime, causing consternation in the family. She has three others, the youngest only an infant, and her desire to protect her children leads to some of the novel's most traumatic moments, one in particular that stayed with me long after I'd finished that actually gave me a nightmare. That doesn’t bother me, as it shows the novel reached something deep inside me.
Dublin
It was certainly an interesting time to read this book. I had only finished the first couple of chapters before a far-right riot broke out on the streets of Dublin. I was also nearing the end when it won the Booker prize - if only the background of every book could be as topical and eventful.
At one point there is a protest in the book against the increasing tyranny of the government. It felt odd watching some of these same streets filled with rioters and burning vehicles. Having lived in Dublin, some of the events at the places mentioned hit home.
And that must be how it works. We are told we can't protest, we refuse to believe it and then we do. Party members are installed in positions of power, which we might disagree with and then we accept because that's how it is. You lose your job because of association with those the party deemed as enemies. You sell your valuables because you want your family to eat, and that's how it is.
Narrative
I know some people have struggled with the lack of speech marks or paragraph breaks in this book but it didn't affect me (it's similar to 'The bee sting’ in that regard) because what it did was completely immerse me in the narrative and create a sense of immediacy. Once you become accustomed to it, I found it had a cinematic aspect. You can get a sense of both Eilish and society breaking apart.
" History is a silent record of people who didn't know when to leave."
Throughout the book, there is a sense of claustrophobia, of a tightening going on. It''s something I as a reader gradually became aware of, as Eilish's situation gradually deteriorated. By the end you have to come up for air.
I struggled to finish the last few chapters of the book because it felt too real. It read like a nightmare and I wanted it to be over. It's a credit to Paul Lynch that he made me feel this way, as my anxiety levels were through the roof. Of course, you can't look away. There's a real sense of crisis and impending doom throughout, and it made me think of Cormac McCarthy, more specifically 'The road', as it becomes increasingly grim.
'The world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and 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, an echo of events that has passed into folklore.'
Refugees
I've read an interview with Paul Lynch where he said he wanted to examine the reasons why someone becomes a refugee. There's a shocking lack of empathy towards people who are forced to flee their homelands, as can be seen in the narrative that drives the far right, and a fine example being the English government's efforts to send refugees to Rwanda.
That's not to say that there isn't a mature conversation to be had about the lack of housing, and deprivation in working-class areas after neo-liberal policies have decimated communities. The mistake is directing anger at the poor people leaving their homelands to eke out a better life, and not those who have neglected communities with their policies whilst in government. Sometimes it seems like there's simply a lack of humanity in the world.
So we see in the book what happens when Irish people become refugees in their own country. Of course, emigration has been something the Irish people have been forced to do for generations, but this time they are forced to flee because of a tyrannical government. These people aren't on boats, they're breaking for the border, the coast, or trying to get to family in Canada.
We've seen the erosion of civil liberties and the rise of far-right governments in other countries, so why not Ireland? There's no reason why the civil wars we see in places like Libya and Syria shouldn't happen here. It's not as if Ireland hasn't been embroiled in a civil war before. I also grew up in a time when society constantly felt as if it was staring over the precipice. I think the plausibility of this is one of the scariest aspects of the book.
Prophet Song Summary
I asked at the beginning how real this book felt. Sometimes I think of the word dystopian and almost feel relieved because hey, that's a future hell and it probably won't happen. But how many times has 'The Handmaid's Tale' been seen as prophetic given the rise of the far right under Trump? It can't happen until it does.
This is one of the darkest books I've read in some time. Society feels fragile, and politics uncertain, and Lynch does a superb job of tapping into these deep fears. He also brings home the plight of refugees by setting the book in a western society. At times this book felt exhausting, but also necessary. And maybe it all starts with a knock on the door.
Oneworld Publications 324 pages August 24 2023