"Prophet Song" (Paul Lynch)

This is a powerful book, winner of this year's Booker Prize (best work of fiction in the U.K. and Ireland).  The setting is an alternative version of modern Ireland, the country stressed by inner turmoil, an authoritarian government in place.  The protagonist whose thoughts we enter is a young professional woman whose husband has been "disappeared" for political reasons.  She is trying to protect her four children and an intermittently-demented father in the face of chaotic changes, which ultimately devolve into civil war.  Herewith several extended excerpts (boldface added):

"She has not moved, her eyes have dropped to watch her feet when she hears it fall from her mouth, the truth about [her son's] father, she is explaining the illegal arrest and detention, the efforts being made to get him before a judge, the fact that nothing will happen before Christmas.  Her heart grows pained as she watches the boy's frowning disbelief, the sliding look in his eye, how his mouth slopes and then he buckles silently to the floor ringing his arms about his knees.  What she sees before her is an idea of order coming undone, the world slewing into a dark and foreign sea.  She holds him in her arms, seeking in her whispers to rebuild for her son the old world of laws that lies broken at his feet, for what is the world to a child when a father without word can be made to disappear?  The world gives to chaos, the ground you walk on flies into the air and the sun shines dark on your head..." (45)

"She finds herself staring into a face that does not alter from its single expression, the colourless eyes, the mouth and what it says although the mouth does not speak - your husband is in detention, Mrs Stack, you have been deemed a security risk.  It is then she is struck with the sense that some wild animal has entered behind her and is pacing the room, she takes the form and slowly folds it, places it into her bag, watching the supervisor leave the chair hearing the silent steps of the animal, sensing its rank breath on her neck, she is afraid to turn around.  The silent, seated faces gaping into phones." (53)

"The detective inspector looks across and finds her gaze and there is a moment between them where he puzzles at her and then he smiles and it is the smile of somebody you know to say hello to on the street, a husband, a father, a volunteer in the community, and yet behind that smile lies the shadow of the state..." (60)

"... let me tell you, whatever-you-call-yourself, your husband is where he is because he is an inciter, an agitator against the state during a time of great threat to this country, you people have no idea what's happening outside in the world, what is coming our way, you will see us all destroyed, this should be a time of unity for our nation but instead there's civil unrest up and down the country and we have to face down the likes of you, get out of my house this minute.  Eilish sees in the woman's face the superior look of the party..." (63)

".. maybe there's two men in a car and one of them doesn't like how you look, maybe you're just wearing white [a protest color] because you like the look of it or maybe you're trying to say something else, something provocative, something the man doesn't like, maybe he stops and gets out and takes your name and address and creates a file with your name on it, maybe you'll be quiet or maybe you'll say the wrong thing and instead of taking your name and address he takes you, puts you in the car, and where's that car going to, Molly, have a think about that, maybe its going to where all the other cars go, the unmarked cars that pull up silently and lift people off the street because of one thing or another, the people who do not return home again, you think because you're fourteen years old you can do what you like that the state isn't interested in you, but they arrested those boys and those boys haven't yet been released and they're your age, you think I'm not doing anything, that I'm just standing about waiting for your father to return, but what I am doing is keeping this family together because right now that is the hardest thing to do in a world that seems designed on tearing us apart..." (76)

"What she sees outside are three men in the driveway, a white SUV parked with a running engine.  Something is thrown against the porch glass and there is a bang behind her as the bedroom door meets the wall, Molly tumbling into her arms shouting about men trying to get into the house... Through the curtains she watches a man climb the Touran, tattoos emblazoning arms and throat, another man bent to the side of the car.  The man brings down a bat upon the windscreen then takes out his sex and urinates on the car, the apish laughing teeth as the man zips up and jumps dow onto the gravel.  Across the street a bedroom light turns on and then off again as the SUV powers away." (138)

"She drops the clothes in the basket and looks down at her hands and does not know why she remains so calm, another door has been opened, she can see this now, it is as though she were looking out upon something she has been waiting for all her life, an atavism awakened in the blood, thinking, how many people across how many lifetimes have watched upon war bearing down on their home, watching and waiting for fate to come, entering into silent negotiation, whispering and then pleading, the mind anticipating all outcomes but for the spectre that cannot be directly looked at.  The electricity stutters and the lights grow dim..." (182)

Reviewers sometimes compliment novels by saying they couldn't put down the book.   This one had quite the opposite effect on me - I often had difficulty continuing even to finish a chapter before the intensity of the drama forced me to "take a break."  By the time war breaks out it is almost a relief to deal only with physical trauma rather than the relentlessly looming terror and anxiety.

The protagonist Eilish reminded me in many ways to Dorothy ("Dot") in the recent fifth season of Fargo - a woman whose intense devotion to preservation of family is likened to a mother tiger that even a sin-eater can't defeat, as she braves sniper fire to find medical help for her shrapnel-injured 12-year-old son.  And at too many moments in the story we are confronted by the fact that some of the worst terror in dystopic times comes from bureaucracy itself and its insistence on forms and IDs.

The excerpts I've embedded should give a sense of the fluidity of Lynch's prose, somewhat reminiscent of a Faulknerian stream of consciousness and how it conveys a sense of menace that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's novels (without McCarthy's incredible vocabulary).

This was the best book I've read in several years.  It's not an "enjoyable" read, but I can recommend it without hesitation.